Otakon, the largest event held at the Baltimore Convention Center, will kick off here for the last time tomorrow before heading south next year to a bigger facility in Washington, D.C. With it will go more than 30,000 attendees and their $11 million in direct economic impact.
The convention, which celebrates Japanese and East Asian pop culture and anime, is leaving Baltimore because it has outgrown the city's meeting facilities. Organizers had warned officials that they would need more space to meet their future needs and potential attendance growth, but the city dragged its feet in giving serious consideration to the expansion of the Baltimore Convention Center. And so, in 2013, Otakon organizers announced plans to move to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C. — a much larger facility — when its Baltimore contract expires this year.
"The Baltimore Convention Center has not aged gracefully," an Otakon statement said at the time.
The reality of the city's loss appears to be sinking in: Last week, the Maryland Stadium Authority voted to commission a $1 million study to look at renovating the convention center. But the effort has failed before, and I fear that it might again, which could be devastating to Baltimore's economy.
In 2010, the Greater Baltimore Committee proposed expanding the convention center, which first opened in 1979 and was last renovated in 1997. But a plan never got off the ground and was in a stalled concept stage when Otakon backed out. If the Baltimore Convention Center isn't expanded, it's unlikely to draw such lucrative events in the future. Larger conventions are already bypassing Baltimore for convention centers in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., which are twice the size of ours.
An expanded convention center would attract more big events to Baltimore and buoy the city's businesses and hotels — including the city-owned Hilton Baltimore, which posted a $5.2 million loss last year.
I live in Baltimore and have been an attendee of Otakon since 2001 (the convention was first held in Baltimore in 1999). I've contributed to its economic impact — and felt the squeeze of a too-small space. At its peak, Otakon brought to the city of Baltimore a total of 35,039 people; the center was so packed, it was very difficult to navigate from one section to the other.
Otakon's staff in 2013 stated that if the convention center is expanded, they would look into the possibility of returning to Baltimore City.
"Our true hope is we go to D.C. ... and during that time, Baltimore makes the needed renovations in such a way that we can come back," Andrew Earnhardt, a representative of Otakon's parent company, told Anime News Network in 2013. "There would be nothing that would make the staff happier than to be able to come back."
And this week, Otakon Convention Chair John Gluth told The Baltimore Sun that it would explore keeping some kind of presence in the area. But "presence" does not equal $11 million. Only a new convention center does.
We must not squander this opportunity to bring Otakon and its economic impact back to Baltimore City in full force and to draw dozens of other events here. The expansion to the Baltimore Convention Center can't fall by the wayside again.
Kun Sun Sweeley lives in Baltimore; his email is ks.sweeley@gmail.com.