A 24-story hotel and 200,000-square-foot office building would alter Baltimore's skyline beside Oriole Park at Camden Yards as part of a $250 million convention center proposal unveiled yesterday.

A 750-room Hilton hotel and the world headquarters for Catholic Relief Services would rise side by side between the ballpark and the landmark Bromo Seltzer tower, according to a preliminary sketch of the project.

The project by developer Robert L. Johnson - the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television - and partner Robert M. Gladstone, chairman of Quadrangle Development Corp. of Washington, would require an unspecified amount of public money.

M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., and the developers were vague yesterday about how much of a public subsidy might be needed, saying they don't know because they need to perform more studies.

But Mayor Martin O'Malley said that a tax break or special taxation district would probably be required, as has been the case for almost all urban hotel developments in recent years.

Brodie wouldn't rule out the possibility that the city - which owns the land - might own the hotel.

"We need a public-private partnership," Brodie said. "This is going to take a team effort to bring this to fruition."

The developers and city officials said the high-profile building complex would boost economic growth downtown and help save the adjacent Baltimore Convention Center, which has been struggling because it isn't connected to a large "headquarters" hotel.

"This is another great chapter of the national story of Baltimore's rebound," O'Malley said during a news conference in City Hall. "Despite the hard times nationally, our economy continues to grow."

Staying downtown

The eight-story, $25 million office building planned for Catholic Relief Services immediately west of the hotel would end the charitable organization's suggestions that it might move its 350 employees from downtown to the suburbs, city officials said. The new building would accommodate up to 500 workers.

Instead of moving to Catonsville, as it had considered, the agency - which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church - would expand, at Paca and Pratt streets.

"We want this to be the world headquarters of our organization, which reaches out around the world to those in need," said Kenneth F. Hackett, executive director of Catholic Relief Services. "We are so pleased that we are able to stay in this wonderful city."

The proposal would fill in a 4-acre, city-owned lot for which the BDC, the city's development agency, has been trying to find a hotel developer for more than a decade.

Attorney Peter G. Angelos, principal owner of the Orioles, studied the possibility of building a 24-story Grand Hyatt hotel on the site, but he couldn't arrange financing.

"That parking lot has been there for the last 15 years, growing cars," Brodie said. "We'd like to see it finally grow a hotel."

The unsolicited proposal from Johnson's RLJ Development LLC and Gladstone's Quadrangle Development is in its early stages and faces many obstacles.

Seeking other ideas

To be fair to other developers who might want to develop the site, the city will advertise for competing proposals for 60 days, Brodie said. Then city officials will weigh the proposals for 30 days before the winner is picked and the developer is granted an exclusive negotiating privilege for the land, Brodie said.

At that point, the developer will have to perform soil and traffic studies, and get approval from the City Council and Board of Estimates.

Drawings of the Johnson-Gladstone project are preliminary, the developers said, and they aren't sure about the height of the buildings or the final cost of the project.

"This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning," Brodie said, quoting Winston Churchill. "With the proposal before us, we have much more we have to do."

This wouldn't mark the first time the city has tried to help the troubled Convention Center. During the late 1990s, more than $20 million in subsidies and tax breaks were approved to help another developer, John Paterakis, build the 32-story Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel about a mile away at Inner Harbor East.

But now city officials argue that the Marriott - while successful - isn't close enough to the Convention Center to serve as a headquarters hotel.

"We will finally have a convention center that isn't missing its central ingredient - a convention center hotel," said Gladstone, whose company oversaw construction of the recently-opened, 400-room Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay resort in Cambridge. "We look forward to filling the gap of the missing convention center hotel."

Minority involvement

Perhaps the most important aspect of the proposal is that it will mean African-American participation in a downtown development, something the city has long been encouraging, O'Malley said.

"This is a centerpiece of what minority entrepreneurship should be all about," said Johnson, who said he would hire a large number of black employees. "When everyone shares in the economic pie, I'm delighted to be part of it."

Although the project might require a substantial amount of city money, city Comptroller Joan Pratt said the investment will likely be worth it.

"This will be an important economic opportunity for African-Americans," said Pratt. "It will give African-Americans a chance to be in the economic mainstream."

City Council President Sheila Dixon said she expects the project to provide an important boost to business in the city. "We have been looking for a convention center hotel for a long time," she said. "Anything that will add an extra burst of energy to the local economy is great."

The proposed hotel project would create 800 construction jobs and 350 permanent positions, the developers said.

Elevated walkways

The 240-foot-tall Hilton - which would include space to expand to 1,000 rooms - would provide elevated walkways over Howard Street leading directly into the Convention Center. It would offer 75,000 square feet of meeting space and at least 750 parking spaces underground.

The space under the hotel might also include a train station for a high-speed maglev train line between Baltimore and Washington, if Congress approves funding for this multimillion-dollar project.

Eutaw Street would cut between the hotel and the headquarters for Catholic Relief Services, which would have 250 parking spaces and be completed by July 2005.

The possible key to the proposal's success is whether the economy and hotel market will remain strong enough to support more construction, several observers said.

Despite the recession, construction projects are sprouting up all over downtown Baltimore.

The city yesterday approved $3.2 million in tax breaks for a 176-room Marriott Residence Inn at 17 Light St., with construction to begin in the next few weeks. At Redwood and Calvert streets, an existing structure is to be converted into a 110-room Hampton Inn starting this winter.