After searching for four years, Catholic Relief Services says it has found the ideal site for a larger headquarters - city-owned land just beyond the left-field bleachers of Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
The nonprofit agency, the international relief arm of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, has joined with Washington developers who are pitching a $250 million convention hotel in downtown Baltimore.
The unlikely pairing was the work of city officials who saw a chance to get a hotel built while also finding a home for a space-squeezed nonprofit threatening to bolt the city with its 350 jobs.
"It was providential timing," said Kenneth F. Hackett, executive director of Catholic Relief Services.
If the joint proposal is selected by the city, the agency would build an "environmentally sensitive" headquarters of about eight stories at a cost of $25 million to $26 million across Eutaw Street from the 750-room hotel, Hackett said.
While the worldwide agency may ask the city for the land at no cost, he said, construction would be paid for privately. The 200,000-square-foot building would sit on the block bounded by Paca, Pratt, Eutaw and Camden streets, now a parking lot and service station.
Even if the complicated hotel deal were to bog down, Hackett said, Catholic Relief Services would go forward. The two developments are part of a single proposal but practically speaking are "unlinked," he said, adding that his projected move-in date is July 2005.
Mayor Martin O'Malley said the relief agency merited the high-profile location at the western entrance to downtown. And he appeared to blunt criticism about allowing the site to go to an entity that pays no property taxes.
"They are nonprofit, but all of us profit by their work," he said at a City Hall news conference. "Certainly the city profits by having so many employees in our downtown employed by organizations like Catholic Relief Services."
The president of the Abell Foundation, which helped lure Catholic Relief Services from New York in 1989, agreed. "I think it's great to have them out front," said Robert C. Embry Jr. "I think they're the kind of organization Baltimore wants to be associated with."
Hackett agreed and noted that similar agencies have followed it to downtown Baltimore, including Lutheran World Relief and World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.
"We bring a little bit of prestige to the city, having the world headquarters of an organization that operates in 94 countries around the world," he said.
Catholic Relief Services is a $373 million operation. Hackett said it has outgrown its 100,000-square-foot offices at 209 W. Fayette St., across from the Greyhound bus station.
The agency has looked at 27 possible sites inside and outside the city, but none "just fit," Hackett said. Earlier this year Catholic Relief Services proposed to build on wooded land in Catonsville owned by the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
In April it backed away from that plan and agreed to consider staying in the city after an appeal from O'Malley. The big question remained where it could go.
Hackett recalled that one day he and his colleagues were around downtown at lunchtime. Someone mused how nice it would be to get the parcel next to Camden Yards, not least because it offers access to the public transportation that 60 percent of staff members use.
" 'Oh,' one of them said, 'the city will never give that up,' " he recalled.
Still, Hackett thought it was worth asking the mayor about the parcel since O'Malley had promised to do whatever he could to retain the group. In July, Hackett met with O'Malley and M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of Baltimore Development Corp., the city development arm.
Initially Brodie had doubts. He saw Catholic Relief Services as a "dark horse" candidate, because the city has always wanted a large hotel there, he recalled yesterday.
But when Brodie looked into it, he realized both the charity and the hotel project would fit. So he asked Catholic Relief Services if it would mind pairing with the hotel developers, Robert L. Johnson and Robert M. Gladstone. Hackett agreed as long as he would not be bound by the hotel's timetable.
The Catholic Relief Services building would have a vegetation-covered roof and would seek to maximize recycling, Hackett said. It would also be able to handle an expanded staff of 500 workers.
Even if the city chooses the joint proposal, hurdles remain. For example, Brodie said the city would have to study whether to give the land to the agency at no cost.