146 Business View Magazine - October 2016
Meanwhile, the Baltimore Convention Center does
have its advantages: it’s easily accessible via road,
rail, and air; it’s located right next to the Inner Har-
bor and across the road from Camden Yards, the Bal-
timore Orioles ballpark; and it’s close to restaurants,
museums, and other attractions. “What we call the
‘tight package’ of things to do and see when you’re
not in the facility,” says Daidakis. And, perhaps, most
important, there are thousands of hotel rooms within
walking distance. “We have a very good situation with
hotel rooms,” she adds. “Connected to the facility we
have about 1,500 committable rooms. And once you
start branching out a little bit, we can commit up to
5,000 rooms within either a short walk or a short com-
mute. Most of our conventions don’t have to engage a
shuttle bus service because of the accessibility from
a variety of hotels; we are a very walkable city. We
partner with Visit Baltimore – they’re our lead sales
and marketing team. Our teams work closely together,
along with other industry partners, hotels, and attrac-
tions to market Baltimore as a destination for meet-
ings and conventions.”
And though Daidakis admits that the last renovation
took place 20 years ago, improvements have been
made to the physical plant, over time. And, in fact,
some of those improvements were achieved without
having to pay for them. For example, Rob Parker, the
Director of Building Services, explains that, in 2013,
the Center entered into a “guaranteed energy and cost
avoidance” project with Constellation Energy, the facil-
ity’s electricity provider.
“That project consisted of a ten million dollar upgrade
in energy conservation measures, including LED and
induction lights throughout the facility, the replace-
ment of all of our toilets and urinals with low-flow fix-
tures, and various HVAC temperature controls,” Parker
says. “The guaranteed savings from those projects
was a little over a million dollars; we keep budgeting
what we would budget normally and the savings pays
for the upgrades to the facility. So, we get about ten
million dollars worth of infrastructure upgrades and
there’s no capital outlay for us. And those savings rep-
resent about a 20 percent reduction in our energy con-
