Baltimore's Disastrous $300,000,000 Hotel

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The Baltimore City government has made a number of questionable decisions …. And by questionable, I actually mean terrible. But there’s one that takes the cake in my opinion as the most fiscally irresponsible of all. It was their decision for the city to get into the hotel game way back in 2003. Many questioned the decision at the time, and over the years it has gotten increasingly worse and worse and worse as economic and societal trends change in the city.

The idea for the hotel goes back almost 25 years ago, back when Martin O Malley was mayor of the city. Baltimore felt they were losing out on business for their convention center due to a lack of a large scale, modern convention center hotel. Studies that were used in support of the project claimed that the lack of such a hotel had lead a hundred million dollars of convention center business going to other cities rather than Baltimore.

The city looked at a number of ways to finance the project through various forms of public private partnerships. Various development groups from around the country made their pitches. Each option presented a slightly different hotel project, and each was structured slightly different with varying levels of risk and potential reward for the city (and ultimately its tax payers). Ultimately, following a contentious debate, the city council voted 9-6 in favor of the option that was seen as the highest risk, highest reward option for the city…. Full ownership by the city.

According to projections, the hotel would only need to average 70% occupancy for the city to turn a profit on the venture…. Well unfortunately things wouldn’t exactly work out that way… but more about that later.
 
So design and construction started on the city’s shiny new $300 million project. Tax free municipal bonds that would be paid off over the next several decades using revenue from the hotel’s operation would be used to finance the project. If all went smoothly, the hotel would exceed that required 70% occupancy rate and the city would be pulling in a profit, while comfortably paying off the bonds by the year 2039….. if things all went smoothly.

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:30 - Background
1:45 - Construction Starts (Some good, some bad)
3:30 - Grand Opening!
4:02 - Well this might not have been the best idea
4:30 - Baltimore.... big time tourist spot?
5:10 - Got that pandemic!!
5:51 - Problems go way beyond low occupancy
6:30 - Camden Yard's blocked skyline view
7:10 - What should be done? (...or what can be done?)
9:10 - The real takeaway (aka basic common sense)