New Baltimore Arena

In mid-December it was announced that four development teams would compete to build a new Baltimore Arena.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.ci.arena17dec17,0,1706521.story

Each of the proposals call for an 18,500 seat-venue, to be built on the site of the existing Arena.

The four existing plans are from:

Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, whose plan includes two public parks – one atop the arena – and a 300-room hotel. In their plan the arena’s upper levels could be closed for smaller events so the facility does not feel empty. The Struever team includes Live Nation, a national concert promotion firm.

ESmith Legacy Inc., which includes ESmith Legacy and Dallas-based Garfield Traub Development as the developers, would incorporate a seven-screen movie theater, a 1,000-seat concert venue, 20,000 square feet of shops and a garage. The team would include AEG as arena operator.

The Arena Development Group, calls for a garage as well as 100,000 square feet of shops.

Cormony Development is proposing a 400-room hotel, 240,000 square feet of offices, up to 20,000 square feet of shops and a garage.

A decision on one of these four proposals is expected by Mid-2009.

To me, when you consider that Janet Marie Smith is a VP of Planning for Struever Bros, this decision should have already been made.

For those that do not know, Ms. Smith has already has a profound effect on Baltimore City. Ms. Smith was an architectural consultant that worked on the contraction of Oriole Park @ Camden Yards.

The designers for OPACY originally suggested a stadium that would have resembled New Comiskey in Chicago. In-fact, initial proposals for the park had it being built in Lansdowne.

Ms. Smith had the vision to build down-town, to refurbish the Warehouse and not tear that down.

This was a major turning-point for the City of Baltimore (and really stadiums across the country, as they all left the suburbs to come back to their respective cities)…

OPACY is what has ultimately allowed for Harbor East, and Harbor Point… the new construction in the Harbor, Canton, and Federal Hill.

OPACY is what allowed for Art Model to envision moving his Browns from Cleveland, and the building of Ravens Stadium.

Baltimore owes so much to Ms. Smith, and that should be rewarded.

When one of these proposals is selected, the City (and State) needs to rally behind the cause.

Each of these projects figure to cost $300M plus, and be publically financed.

Plenty of people will cringe about the cost… but the cost of not doing this is greater.

A new Arena, will bring in a more regular level of National level concerts… concerts that currently go to Washington, and skip Baltimore.

A new Arena, will allow Baltimore to compete for NCAA Tournament games, along with conference tournaments (ACC, Big East, CAA, MEAC)…

A new Arena, combined with the Hilton Convention Hotel, will allow the City to compete for the largest Conventions…. Which bring-in huge amounts of spending money to the City.

A new Arena, on the existing site, will help the Hippodrome, and the rest of the Westside development that is going on with the University of Maryland’s bio-tech park.

You would also expect a new Arena would allow the City to obtain an Arena football team… have a better home for the Blast…. And with 18,500 seats, and the corresponding skyboxes… the City could eventually be a viable home for an existing NBA/NHL team that wants to move… really, that would depend on the Corporate community of Baltimore, and how willing/able they were to fill the skyboxes.

Beyond the Sun article above, you can find additional news and commentary about the proposed Arena at:

Baltimore Grows
http://www.baltimoregrows.com/
http://www.baltimoregrows.com/2008/07/25/new-baltimore-arena/

Maryland Stadium Authority
http://www.mdstad.com/

http://www.mdstad.com/pdf/RevisedFinalMarket-FinancialAnalysis2-28-07_FSAR.pdf

Baltimore Sun – Dan Rodricks
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.rodricks27jul27,0,1721575.column