Baltimore’s Top of the World observation deck won’t close on May 31 after all

Baltimore’s Top of the World observation deck, originally scheduled to close permanently on May 31, won’t be closing then after all.

Robyn Murphy, interim CEO of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), told a City Council budget committee on Thursday that the State of Maryland, the landlord of the observation deck, has agreed to let BOPA keep the attraction open past May 31, when its lease on the space is due to expire.

Murphy didn’t say exactly how long the attraction will remain open, but she told council members during a budget hearing that it will be open at least through the summer tourism season.

She told council members that BOPA had planned to “sunset” the Top of the World operation “due to the expiration of the state’s lease with the city of Baltimore.” But “just days before the closure,” she said, officials signed a “temporary MOU” that allows the attraction to continue “full-time operation, all summer,” including its summer camp and other programs it has there.

Richard Scher, director of communications for the Maryland Port Administration, confirmed that the Top of the World observation deck will remain open past May 31.

“We’ve offered the city a short-term lease extension so we can continue evaluating options” for long-term use of the space, he said in an email message. “The current lease is a 20-year agreement with the city that expires at the end of this month.  The Maryland Port Administration has leased the entire 27th floor of the World Trade Center to the City of Baltimore since 1978, one year after the building opened.” 

The decision represents a reprieve of sorts for the Inner Harbor attraction, which occupies the 27^th floor of the World Trade Center Baltimore, 401 E. Pratt St., and offers a 360-degree view of the city and surrounding region from high above.

It means that residents and tourists will continue to be able to visit the Top of the World when they go to the National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center and other harbor attractions.

It also means that the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland, which occupies one gallery in the Top of the World space, will also remain open to visitors in its current location, at least temporarily. The 9/11 exhibit honors Marylanders who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks by showing artifacts from the Twin Towers, Pentagon and Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s a companion to an outdoor exhibit at the base of the World Trade Center.

Origins of the Top of the World attraction  

BOPA and its predecessors have operated the Top of the World observation deck for the city since 2005. For many years, it provided a source of income for BOPA that helped fund events such as the Inner Harbor fireworks.

Public officials are unclear how the city came to rent space from the state, and land records don’t explain it. One possible explanation, which has become a sort of urban legend, is that the city previously owned the land where the World Trade Center was constructed, and then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer said the city would confer the land to the state if state officials would give the city one floor of the building, in perpetuity, for city use.

As mayor, Schaefer was constantly seeking to take good ideas from other cities – an aquarium, a festival marketplace — and bring them to Baltimore. Observation decks were popular in other cities, the reasoning goes, and it made sense that one would draw visitors in Baltimore too, while showing off the improvements made to the Inner Harbor.

There doesn’t seem to be any written record of such an agreement, only renewable leases for the 27^th floor. City Comptroller Bill Henry said he thinks it may have started with a handshake agreement between Schaefer and then-Governor Marvin Mandel, but was never documented.

Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore Development Corporation CEO Colin Tarbert and other city leaders say they aren’t aware how the city came to occupy the 27^th floor. Robert C. Embry Jr., who was the city’s housing commissioner in the early 1970s and in many ways Schaefer’s urban development guru, said he can’t recall.

Not a long lease extension

Murphy first told BOPA board members in January that the city’s lease with the state is due to expire at the end of May and state officials decided not to renew it.

“Unfortunately, at the end of the lease, the state wants the space back and we are in the process of terminating the lease,” she told BOPA’s board in January.

Murphy said after Thursday’s budget hearing that the state hasn’t offered a long extension to BOPA’s lease for the 27^th floor and it’s her understanding that the Top of the World observation deck will still have to close at some point.  

But she said state officials have indicated they don’t need the space yet, and that’s why they have agreed to let the city and BOPA continue using it for now.

“Because they don’t quite need the space just yet, and for the greater good of the citizens of Baltimore and tourism, they were like, ‘you can just keep it open for a while,’ ” she said.

While this is not a permanent change to the state’s plan to take the space back, she said, it means the Top of the World will be open for at least several more months. “It will certainly be through the summer.”

The bottom line, she said, is that “it’s their space…But they’re allowing the observation level to stay open because they don’t quite yet need the space…It’s just a temporary MOU because they weren’t prepared to reallocate the space yet. So in the interest of the greater good, they were like, ‘if you guys can, go ahead and keep it open.'”

For now, she said, BOPA will continue to operate the Top of the World observation deck the way it always has. About the only change visitors will notice, she said, is that it will be open “summer hours,” which are longer than winter hours.

“It’s business as usual,” she said. “Anything that you could do before May, [you can do] after May at Top of the World. You can buy your ticket. You can book a school group. You can go and have a sunset view of the Inner Harbor or any part of Baltimore…Nothing’s changed…It’s like it always was.”