Baltimore Convention Center

The Baltimore Convention Center is located in the heart of downtown Baltimore, Maryland. This center is a municipal building owned and operated by the City of Baltimore. The facility was built in two phases, with the original center covering 300,000 square feet (28,000 square meters) of exhibition and meeting space, which opened in August 1979 at a cost of $51.4 million. An expansion costing $151 million increased the total area to 1.225 million square feet (113,800 square meters), completed in April 1997. A further expansion plan for the Baltimore Convention Center, estimated to cost $400 million, included a new 500-room hotel and an 18,500-seat arena; this project was estimated to cost $900 million, but the proposal has since been abandoned and is considered dead. As of March 2016, Maryland was exploring expanding the Baltimore Convention Center at an estimated cost of $600 million, with plans to build a new hotel as part of the expansion. As of August 2016, proposals to merge the expanded convention center, arena, and hotel have been revived. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake requested that the Maryland Stadium Authority provide a $1 million feasibility study, which was approved on August 2, 2016. As of September 2017, the first phase of the feasibility study had begun and was expected to be released by the end of 2017. On July 6, 2018, the Maryland Stadium Authority finally released the first phase of the feasibility study.