Ten days ago, in a bank headquarters high atop Charles Street at a circular table that looked like the war room set from “Dr. Strangelove,” there arrived maybe 20 pretty good municipal hitters. They were bankers and business leaders and sporting types. And they kept using a phrase.

“When the hotel comes,” they kept saying.

The hotel is the new Hilton, on Pratt Street by the Baltimore Convention Center, and it opens its doors in the next few weeks and arrives like an answered prayer.

Everybody, including those at the big table at the bank headquarters, says the hotel will finally make Baltimore big league in the tourism business. Some think the city’s already doing pretty well with about 12 million visitors a year who spend nearly $3 billion and support about 80,000 jobs across the metro area and make tourism the city’s second-largest industry.

This story continues below
Advertisement

But this hotel takes everything to a new level, we’re told. It will increase convention business. It will draw more people to Harborplace, to area restaurants and bars, to museums and theaters and shops, to nearby neighborhoods, and to Oriole Park.

We’ve been hearing such talk ever since the opening of the Convention Center so many years ago, except that we never had a hotel close enough, and big enough, to make the largest conventions wish to come here.

With the new Hilton, those such as Tom Noonan have been able to market Baltimore to prospective conventioneers as never before. Four years ago, out-of-towners committed to 248,000 downtown hotel rooms. A year ago, with the new Hilton coming out of the ground, commitments were made for 381,000 hotel rooms. This year, about 451,000 rooms, for an average Noonan estimates at about $180 a night per room. Mayor Sheila Dixon says the economic impact of the new bookings is about $422 million. She is already computing the tax dividends.

Noonan heads the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. As of Friday, he will head the brand-new Baltimore Area Convention and Tourism Board, which will oversee the old convention association and the Convention Center itself.

“The whole downtown hotel package has now been elevated,” Noonan said. “Now we have all the big chains, with the Marriott, the Sheraton, the Hyatt. There’s room for everybody who wants to come here. The situation we’ve had before this, we can draw something like the Baltimore Auto Show. This is fine, it’s great, you draw maybe 100,000 people over three days.

“But they’re mostly local people. They’re not spending as much. Now you can pull in an out-of-town convention that needs, say, 4,000 rooms. Almost all those rooms are now walkable to the Convention Center. We don’t have to put anybody on a shuttle bus to get to the convention, where it’s costing us $1,500 a day per bus and you’re running 30 shuttle buses all over town the way a lot of other cities do.

“We’re out of that now. It means we’re a strong candidate for the kind of meetings that used to go to other cities. And that means money and jobs and opportunities all across the tourism industry.”

At that bank headquarters meeting the other day, these business types practically salivated over the possibilities. Construction of the new Hilton has been an eyesore and a traffic-slower and a general annoyance. Also, it’s obliterated tourists’ views of such sights as Oriole Park and the Sports Legends Museum, located at the hotel’s back door. They’re both naturals to hold hands with the new hotel.

“This is a big positive for Baltimore,” said Ed Hale. He is chief executive of 1st Mariner Bank and chairman of the board of the newly named convention and tourism organization. “You get the bigger conventions. You go after the big ballgames, like Army-Navy. It sends a signal to the entire tourism industry that we have a new day in Baltimore. This is big economic news.”

Official opening of the hotel is Aug. 22, though its doors will quietly swing open maybe two weeks earlier to make sure all systems are ready. In a tough economic time, this is a real shot in the arm. You could see it on the faces of all those at the big circular table at the bank headquarters.

But we’ll also see it with all those who will have new jobs, and new money in their wallets, as the hotel opens and the convention business finally prepares to go where a lot of people imagined it was headed years and years ago.