The Convention Center is crumbling. The Inner Harbor has seen better days. And the streetscape of downtown Baltimore is antagonistic to everyone not in a car.

Fixing this will be costly, but who’s going to pay for it?

According to a bill in the state legislature, the answer could be a public authority. This new independent agency would work with the state to borrow large amounts of money. That debt would likely be repaid by new taxes in Baltimore.

Mayor Brandon Scott would control the authority, and his administration has been pushing for legislation that appeared to have the ambitious, but targeted, goal of creating an authority to oversee renovations of the Baltimore Convention Center.

But a closer reading of the bill shows that the authority’s power would extend beyond the Convention Center walls and into downtown — giving it broad power to control and own property, remake public spaces and potentially play a key role in the privately funded redevelopment of Harborplace at the Inner Harbor.

The finer details of the proposal were not discussed at public hearings in Annapolis, where lawmakers gave the legislation a warm reaction, moving it through committee hearings and praising the work of the Convention Center.

While it would operate in Baltimore and the mayor would appoint a majority of its members, a public authority is an independent political body, and it can only be created by the state government.

Despite the favorable review in Annapolis, the mayor’s office worked with lawmakers to tweak the bill, likely postponing the creation of any authority until next year. Nina Themelis, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Government Relations, told lawmakers last month that the city was still “working through some of the specifics of the authority,” including its financing model.

“We just didn’t have the amount of time needed to make sure that we were passing the best possible version,” Themelis said during a March meeting of the Baltimore delegation.

Themelis did not elaborate, and lawmakers did not ask questions.

An official in the mayor’s office told The Baltimore Banner that the bill was intended to be limited to renovating the Convention Center.

A crumbling Convention Center

The idea for the authority comes during a desperate time for the Convention Center, which opened in 1979 and expanded in the 1990s. Today, pipes are corroded, floors flood and the plumbing and HVAC systems regularly break down.

While city and state leaders view the Convention Center as an economic catalyst that is vital to the region’s tourism industry, the venue loses millions of dollars each year and its upkeep is expensive.

Repairs have piled up, officials say, and the Convention Center now has at least $110 million in deferred maintenance.

“Our team works tirelessly to keep the doors open, but we are literally holding the building together with patch kits and glue,” Mac Cambell, executive director of the Convention Center, told state lawmakers earlier this year.

Meanwhile, tourism officials said Baltimore is losing ground to other cities with newer, bigger convention centers.

“We know that with the right investment, Baltimore can compete — and win,” Campbell said. “A fresh coat of paint won’t fix a crumbling foundation.”

A 2021 report commissioned by the state found that a newly renovated and modernized Baltimore Convention Center could generate an additional $18.5 million in city and state taxes annually.

But it would take decades for that new tax revenue to offset the estimated $746 million needed for the renovation and modernization — or close to $1 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

That’s a huge sum of money for a cash-strapped city. Last year, state lawmakers created a task force to come up with a creative, long-term solution.

The scope widens

In December, that task force published its report, which recommended the creation of the Baltimore Convention and Tourism Redevelopment and Operating Authority.

The task force found that other cities use an authority or nonprofit model to own and operate their convention centers, instead of directly owning and operating them, as Baltimore does.

According to the report, the authority would absorb Visit Baltimore and own the Baltimore Convention Center, and it would work with the state to borrow money — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — by issuing bonds. Those bonds would allow the authority to tackle ambitious capital projects today and repay the debt over multiple decades.

Still, the report said those debt payments would require a dedicated stream of funding. It recommended the creation of a new tax on prepared food and an increased tax on hotels, and it suggested selling the naming rights of the Convention Center for an estimated $2 million.

While much of the report of focused on the Convention Center, it cited the “deterioration of Harborplace” as one of the factors hampering convention attendance.

Harborplace’s twin, green-roofed pavilions along the city’s waterfront are expected to be demolished as part of a massive redevelopment of the Inner Harbor.

The report also mentioned Downtown RISE, the mayor’s wide-ranging plan to turn the area into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly “20-minute city.”

“This Task Force recognizes this work is not done in a vacuum,” the report said. “Major investments in downtown Baltimore, such as the Harborplace redevelopment and the Downtown RISE 10-Year Vision create tremendous opportunity to leverage investment to draw tourism, conventions, and events.”

That report was used to write House Bill 1016 and Senate Bill 672, which would have empowered the authority to develop, control and own “any other contiguous or nearby real property.”

It’s unclear what distance qualifies as “nearby” the Convention Center, but when the bill was amended in March, it specifically mentioned the Inner Harbor.

The bill survived crossover day in the State House, but it still has to go through additional committee hearings before a full vote of the General Assembly, and the legislative session ends Monday.

If passed, the bill as amended simply extends the life of the task force for another year, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $350,000, with an expectation that lawmakers will introduce another bill next year to create the public authority.

Who stands to benefit?

If an authority is created, it could be a boon to MCB Real Estate, which owns the Harborplace pavilions as well as other downtown properties.

MCB owns the office building directly between Harborplace and the Convention Center and a parking garage a block north of Harborplace. It also controls a vacant lot on Pratt Street where it planned to build a mixed-use office tower.

MCB was the only developer with a seat on the task force. An MCB spokeswoman said the firm was asked to participate on the task force and had no involvement in crafting the subsequent bill that recommended creating the authority.

MCB’s representative on the task force was Leland Shelton, who served as the mayor’s campaign treasurer during the 2020 mayoral race.

In 2023, MCB unveiled plans to knock down the Harborplace pavilions, rebuild the waterfront pavilions, change the surrounding streetscape and build five new structures — including two residential towers stretching 25 and 32 stories high. Elected officials, including members of the City Council, state lawmakers, the mayor and the governor, cheered those plans.

The estimated price tag was $900 million — with $400 million coming from taxpayers.

“MCB is currently working with federal and state elected officials to secure additional funding for public improvements surrounding Harborplace, including road improvements, promenade and public open space,” said Alexandra Hughes, a spokesperson for MCB.

Whether a new public authority will oversee the Convention Center or finance any other projects downtown is unclear. For now, it remains an idea.