Plans for an upgrade to the Baltimore Convention Center are headed back to the drawing board after officials discovered an expansion would cost more than $1.5 billion to complete as envisioned.
The eye-popping price tag was driven upward by the projected costs of infrastructure work and acquisition of the privately owned Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel site, both of which figured in to a conceptualization of the center unveiled in 2018.
Board members for the Maryland Stadium Authority, the group tasked with providing independent analysis and cost estimates for the project, voted Tuesday to develop a new round of concept designs for the center, which are expected to be released by the end of 2020. The Baltimore City Convention Center Capital Improvement Reserve Fund will pay for the design work, which is projected to cost $400,000.
The focus will be on modernizing the convention center rather than expanding its footprint as widely as originally anticipated, Gary McGuigan, senior vice president of the stadium authority’s capital projects development group, told board members. The request to scale back the project was made by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young and a group of stakeholders including the Greater Baltimore Committee, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Baltimore Development Corp., Visit Baltimore and the convention center’s leadership, stadium authority officials said.