The Baltimore Visitor Center, closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, will reopen later this month to resume its role as a one-stop clearinghouse for information about the city.
Al Hutchinson, president and CEO of Visit Baltimore, announced Tuesday that the Inner Harbor information center will reopen in time for the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments, which will be held from Feb. 22-26 at the Royal Farms Arena and again in February 2023.
Visit Baltimore, the city’s official destination sales and marketing organization, operates the visitor center.
“I’m happy to say that we did get approval from the city — because it’s a city-owned venue – they gave it thumbs up for us to reopen the Visitor Center…in time for the tournament,” Hutchinson told members of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore in an online briefing session entitled “Downtown Download – The CIAA Tournament & Its Benefits for Baltimore.”
Now that the city has approved the reopening, “we’ll do our part to make sure it’s a very welcoming space, in conjunction with Rash Field, what they’re doing there with that venue,” Hutchinson said. “We think it’s important for it to be online, and it will be. We’ll be working very quickly to get it up and operational.”
Located at 401 Light St. on the west shore of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and known for its wavy roofline, the Visitor Center is a one-story pavilion where visitors and area residents can get brochures, visitor guides, maps and information about current and future events and programs in the city. Before the pandemic, it was open six or seven days a week, depending on the season.
The visitor center was closed in April 2020, after state and local officials closed public buildings and restricted large gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and has remained shut even as other Inner Harbor businesses and attractions reopened. Representatives of area museums and other organizations have encouraged city officials to reopen it, since it’s centrally located and plays a key role in promoting destinations around the city and region.
Hutchinson said in an email message after the briefing that his office had to close the Visitor Center in 2020 “due to the impact of the pandemic on Visit Baltimore’s budget.” But last Friday, he said, “the City gave us the approval to reopen the Visitor Center in time for the CIAA.”
Hutchinson said his office is still formulating plans for how the reopened Visitor Center will operate and that he’ll provide information about its hours as soon as he can.
“We are working on the model to reopen,” he said. “It will be opened limited hours, but we are still working on what that model will look like.”
The CIAA tournaments are expected to bring thousands of visitors to Baltimore in 2022 and 2023 and provide an economic boost for hotels, restaurants and other businesses.
Another way Visit Baltimore is preparing to greet out-of-towners, Hutchinson said in Tuesday’s briefing, is by posting tournament-related street banners in areas of the city that don’t normally see them, including along Pennsylvania Avenue and around the campuses of Morgan State University and Coppin State University.
For those who missed the hour-long briefing about the tournament, the Downtown Partnership plans to post a video of the session on its website, godowntownbaltimore.com.
