New 18,500-seat venue to be built at location of 1st Mariner Arena

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Baltimore’s new arena will be bigger than anyone expected and in a familiar location.

After months of deliberations, the Baltimore Development Corp. and a panel of city and state officials on Thursday announced plans to build an 18,500-seat, $300 million venue at the site of 1st Mariner Arena in downtown Baltimore. The plan could bring a professional basketball or hockey team to Baltimore, but it would leave the city without a major entertainment venue for three to four years.

“Whether or not we have a major league team … this is a major league city and deserves a major league arena,” said M.J. “Jay” Brodie, chairman of the arena advisory panel and president of the BDC.

Some city developers and urban architects met the panel’s decision with criticism. The existing building, built in 1962, is an obsolete but necessary part of the city’s economy, said Ed Hale, one of seven developers who pitched the panel on alternative sites.

“There will be a loss of all the jobs for three years that are in security, concessions, the arena management company, the surrounding business like hotel and restaurants that are frequented,” Hale said. “I don’t know if everyone has looked at this from all the angles because there could be some unintended consequences.”

A feasibility study conducted last year for the Maryland Stadium Authority said 1st Mariner generates an estimated $47.2 million in economic impact and $3.7 million in tax revenue annually.

Brodie said the BDC will issue a request for proposals for a development team, with responses expect within 90 to 120 days. Those proposals would determine the eventual construction and opening timeline of the new arena, he said.

The new facility would be built on a footprint the size of Washington, D.C.’s Verizon Center, including the current parking garage area and a strip of land between the area and Hopkins Place.

Brodie said the panel would explore alternative sites for events like the weeklong Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He said the panel also met Thursday morning with Hale, operator of the Baltimore Blast indoor soccer team, and discussed the potential construction of a temporary facility for the team within city limits.

“It is a concern that you’re going to be losing the economic benefit of events during those years,” said panel member Don Fry, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Baltimore Committee. “Although you hope to maintain all of them at alternative locations, the reality is you’re not going to be able to maintain all of them.”

Brodie said financing details of the new arena were “up in the air” until proposals came in, but the plan sought significant private contributions. 1st Mariner Arena and its parcel of land is owned by the city and privately managed, but Brodie said that could change with the new arena.

That financing will take place without any current commitment from major league sports franchises, said panel member Clarence Bishop, deputy secretary with the Department of Business and Economic Development. But the panel said a major league team isn’t required to make the new arena a success.

“It isn’t just a major league team thing, it isn’t just the NBA,” he said. “It really is the concerts and the family shows and the circus. That we believe will fill an arena of this size, [despite] if or when there is a major league team.”

acahall@baltimoreexaminer.com

acannarsa@baltimoreexaminer.com

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