Baltimore convention center overhaul could cost $1 billion, task force says

A $1 billion overhaul of the Baltimore Convention Center would be a bet that downtown can win more conventions, fill more hotel rooms and drive more spending at nearby restaurants, or else risk falling farther behind rival cities that keep upgrading their own facilities.

The 22-person Baltimore Convention and Tourism Redevelopment and Operating Authority Task Force, created by the Maryland General Assembly, went into effect on July 1, 2024, and is scheduled to end June 30, 2026. Its job is to recommend funding and governance changes for renovation, redevelopment, financing, maintenance and management at the convention site, and a December 2024 report called for a joint authority that would effectively merge Visit Baltimore and the Baltimore Convention Center under one operating model.

That overhaul would not come cheaply. Funding is likely to involve a new 3% tax on restaurants and prepared foods, a politically sensitive move in a city where downtown businesses are still trying to recover unevenly. City leaders also acknowledge that decades of efforts have not produced the attendance gains they wanted, even as the convention market has become a national arms race.

The scale of the project has been in view for years. In February 2020, the Maryland Stadium Authority board approved a request from Mayor Brandon Scott to develop a concept design for modernizing the convention center. An earlier 2018 study outlined an “ideal” program calling for 400,000 contiguous square feet of exhibit space. That work found that a major expansion would likely require the privately owned Sheraton hotel site at Charles and Conway streets, part of Charles Street and utility relocations. The 2020 design work was funded with $400,000 from the Baltimore City Convention Center Capital Improvement Reserve Fund, split between the city and state.

The business case rests on whether Baltimore can convert those upgrades into more bookings and more spillover spending. Visit Baltimore says the convention center books about 59 conventions a year, above its annual goal of 36, though many of those bookings are for future years and events are scheduled as far ahead as 2040. The Greater Baltimore Committee says the center hosts more than 100 events and more than 400,000 attendees each year, generating nearly $60 million in annual economic activity outside Baltimore City and more than $12 million in annual state tax revenue.

But downtown’s hotel market is getting thinner. Visit Baltimore says the central business district has lost about 6.6% of its total hotel supply since March 2025. The Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel closed at the end of 2025, and the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel was auctioned off in March 2026 to the foreclosing lender. Maryland tourism officials say those losses make room-block planning harder for conventions, even if they do not decide where attendees sleep. For Baltimore, the question is whether a bigger, more modern convention center can help stabilize downtown business before competitors pull even farther ahead.