On Location in Baltimore

by Emily Lambert

Get In On It

With a record 17 million tourists visiting Baltimore in 2005—and more importantly, with their spending at a record high of $3 billion—Charm City is vastly different than it was just a decade ago.

The city has become a major player in the conventions market, and exciting shopping and entertainment developments now dot the landscape—some built from the ground up and others redevelopments or expansions of existing centers.

And there are more exciting projects to come in Baltimore's promising future. A range of commercial developments totaling more than $3 billion are in the pipeline.

The city offers tourists and locals more to see and do than ever before. Perhaps the most well-known and frequently visited area of Baltimore is the Inner Harbor—one of America's oldest seaports and now a hot travel destination, thanks in part to a Frommers listing in early 2005 that named Baltimore one of the top 10 up-and-coming summer travel destinations in the world.

At the Inner Harbor, locals and tourists enjoy magnificent views of the Chesapeake Bay while strolling in and out of stores, grabbing a crab cake sandwich, and visiting any number of the 130 cultural and historical attractions the city has to offer.

The Inner Harbor is home to numerous shopping centers, including General Growth Properties' Harborplace and The Gallery at Harborplace, both of which have specialty leasing programs. Nearby is Power Plant Live!, a $35 million entertainment and dining center developed several years ago by the Cordish Company.

The center features more than a dozen restaurants, bars, comedy clubs and dance clubs—all anchored by a 1,600-person occupancy state-of-the-art live music venue.

Close by is The Power Plant, another mixed-use project also developed by Cordish in the late '90s that has loft offices and numerous national retailers, including ESPN Zone, a multi-level Barnes & Nobel and a Gold's Gym.

The property is currently being expanded with the construction of an adjacent Pier IV retail/entertainment venue and office building. These venues don't have specialty retail programs, but they do draw millions of potential customers to the Inner Harbor each year.

There are plenty of centers in Baltimore that do have specialty leasing programs.

"If you want to try opening [in] several malls at once within a half hour of each other, you can be in three to four shopping centers that are all over 1 million square feet in size. Yet they're far enough apart that they still have their own style and personality," says Tony Summers, group business development manager for General Growth Properties in Maryland and Delaware.

If you're a retailer who wants to dominate a market, with no competition in the immediate area, the Baltimore suburbs offer a variety of choices. Some centers are the only enclosed properties in their county.

Here's a sample of what the region has to offer, starting within the city limits.