Beltway ballgame

Special Report: D.C.'s drive for big-league baseball could infringe on Orioles' turf; Baltimore fears falling attendance

By Bill Atkinson | Sun Staff

June 13, 2004

Each spring the money starts flowing into the bars, restaurants and hotels around Camden Yards when the Orioles are in town.

This year, nearly 3 million people from across the region are expected to converge to see the Orioles play, pouring out of buses and cars that clog Inner Harbor streets. Many arrive early or linger to eat or play in Baltimore.

But the crowds - thinner in recent losing seasons - could soon become even thinner, producing an economic trauma for the Orioles and Baltimore.

The reason is baseball in Washington. The nation's capital has made an offer worth about $600 million to lure the bankrupt Montreal Expos to Washington. Northern Virginia is also bidding.

Major League Baseball could decide as soon as next month. For Washington fans, the offer marks the chance of a lifetime. For Peter G. Angelos, owner of the Orioles, it's a potential disaster.

Angelos says residents of Washington and its suburbs make up 25 percent of the club's fans, and he warns that a new team in the capital would be economically devastating for the Orioles.

Others say Baltimore baseball might be enlivened by neighborly competition.

But civic leaders in Baltimore say baseball at Camden Yards is an important contributor to the Inner Harbor's economic boom, an added enticement for business and convention visitors, and an important backdrop for the harbor's bustling scene.

A Washington team "would have a very detrimental impact on our city and on the region," said Donald Fry, president of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a business and economic leadership group. "I think there would be significant economic fallout in Baltimore should Major League Baseball give D.C. a third chance to prove its support for baseball."

"I dread the prospect of a team locating in Washington, D.C., proper," said Anirban Basu, chief executive of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore-based economic and consulting firm. "If you were to cause the Orioles to become a second-rate ballclub ... that obviously is going to mean less economic activity, less spending, fewer hotel room nights, less of a reason for conventions to take place here."

Not ready for two

Basu estimates that crowds attending Orioles home games spend $2 million to $2.6 million a game, or as much as $210 million a season. "That is a big impact. You are talking about $200 million a year, most of it localized," he said.

"We have a thriving economic region, but we may not be ready to support two teams yet," said Aris Melissaratos, secretary of Maryland's Department of Business and Economic Development.

There are reasons beyond economics that the decision on a Washington team is viewed with such trepidation in Baltimore. The city's history has been marked in recent decades by a struggle to maintain its major-league standing.

Fans were jarred by the loss of the Bullets, who moved to Washington in 1973, and the Colts, who left a decade later in a surprise midnight move to Indianapolis. With great effort, Baltimore regained professional football by 1996, when the Cleveland Browns began play as the Ravens. The difficulties reflect a larger economic tide. While Washington has flourished, Baltimore has lost some of its biggest businesses, including USF&G Corp., Alex. Brown Inc., Noxell Corp. and MNC Financial Inc.

Washington looms over the Baltimore area in population, income and economic activity.

The Washington metropolitan statistical area, which stretches into the Maryland suburbs, Virginia and West Virginia, is the seventh-largest in the country with nearly 5 million people. It is about twice the size of Baltimore's metropolitan area and is growing more than twice as fast. Average personal income is 20 percent higher in the Washington area than in the Baltimore area, and employers are hiring nearly seven times faster than companies in Baltimore are.

Still, some in Baltimore view a new Washington-area baseball team as more of an opportunity than a threat.

They point out that attendance at Orioles games, even without a team in Washington, has plunged 34 percent since 1997 - the last time the team made the playoffs - and say the Orioles lack the vitality to be considered a healthy piece of the city's economic scene.

"What I am hoping is that what it [a team in Washington or Northern Virginia] will do is cause a little more competition with the Orioles to compete for a fan base," said Andy Yefko, owner of Pickles Pub, a bar next to Camden Yards.