Now that Create Baltimore has secured an agreement with the State of Maryland that allows it to continue operating the Top of the World Observation Level for “years to come,” the arts agency is seeking to raise $500,000 to improve the visitor experience there.
‘Creating the View’ is the name of the campaign that Create Baltimore, formerly known as the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, is launching to raise funds to make capital improvements to the attraction, which it operates for the City of Baltimore.
Robyn Murphy, the CEO of Create Baltimore, told board members on Tuesday that Baltimore’s Board of Estimates will be asked this week to approve an agreement with the state that allows the Top of the World attraction to stay on the 27th floor of the Baltimore World Trade Center at 401 E. Pratt St. until June 30, 2026.
Murphy said that agreement will be followed next year by a second agreement that will enable the attraction to remain in the state-owned office tower even longer, but she didn’t say exactly how long.
The Top of the World’s current lease at the World Trade Center is due to expire on Nov. 30 if it isn’t extended before then, and the Board of Estimates’ last meeting before the end of November is Wednesday, Nov. 19.
Murphy said after the quarterly meeting of Create Baltimore’s board that city and state representatives have already signed off on the agreement to extend the lease expiration date until June 30, 2026. She told the board members during their meeting that the agreement will be presented to the Board of Estimates as a “walk-on item.” [Update on Nov. 19: the board approved the extension by a vote of 5 to 0].
The plans are consistent with an announcement that Murphy made on Oct. 27, when she said city and state officials have reached an “agreement in principle” that allows the Top of the World attraction to remain open at the World Trade Center for “years to come.”
Murphy said the latest agreement will essentially extend a memorandum that was approved by the Board of Estimates last spring. That agreement gave the Top of the World permission to continue operating on the 27th floor until Nov. 30, instead of the previous lease expiration date of May 31.
Murphy explained after Tuesday’s meeting that the seven-month extension gives city and state officials time to draft a long-term lease agreement that will enable the attraction to remain on the 27th floor much longer, in keeping with the “agreement in principle” that she announced on Oct. 27.
She said after Tuesday’s meeting that the second agreement will be presented to the Board of Estimates well before June 30, 2026, and she couldn’t say yet how long the lease would be. She told her board during the meeting that previous leases for the Top of the World have been up to 20 years long.
Different outcome
The outcome – keeping the Top of the World open – is a change from what Murphy said was in the works earlier this year. Murphy told her board in January that state officials notified the city that they wanted the space back and would not renew the city’s lease for the Top of the World when it expired at the end of May. A spokesman for the Maryland Port Administration (MPA), which manages the building, didn’t say what state officials had in mind, only that they wanted to explore other uses for the space.
“The MPA, in conjunction with the State of Maryland, has begun to look at reimagining that space to better fit the needs and goals of a prime, Inner Harbor, Class A office building,” Director of Communications Richard Scher said in an email message in January. “Existing tenants have also expressed interest in expanding their office spaces within the building. We are currently evaluating the future needs of the floor.”
Murphy’s disclosure drew widespread opposition from civic leaders who said the Top of the World is an asset that deserves to stay open, particularly since Baltimore is about to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with tall ships coming to the Inner Harbor.
Murphy told her board on Tuesday that state officials initially didn’t want to keep the Top of the World attraction in the building because they wanted to move 400 state employees to the World Trade Center from another building and needed space to do that. She said state officials have since reconsidered and agreed to let the attraction remain, along with the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland that occupies part of the space, and the document that will be presented to the Board of Estimates on Wednesday reflects that change.
“Creating the View”
Along with the agreement to keep the Top of the World attraction on the 27th floor, Create Baltimore is raising $500,000 to improve the space and the exhibits visitors see.
Brenna O’Grady, Senior Director of Fundraising for Create Baltimore, said at Tuesday’s board meeting that ‘Creating the View’ is one of three fundraising campaigns that Create Baltimore is working on. She said the others are ‘Creating the Festival,’ a campaign to raise funds for Baltimore’s annual Artscape festival, and a general campaign to support Create Baltimore.
Murphy said money raised in the ‘Creating the View’ campaign will help fund a variety of improvements to the space, from upgrading educational kiosks to replacing worn carpeting. Visitors have noted for some time that many of the graphic panels in the space present out-of-date information about what they see when they look out the windows. In addition, officials want the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland to be in top condition because the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks is in 2026. Ziger/Snead Architects, designer of the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland, is working on the project.
Artscape will be held over the Memorial Day weekend, on Saturday, May 23, and Sunday, May 24. O’Grady didn’t provide an exact figure when asked how much Create Baltimore wants to raise in the ‘Creating the Festival’ campaign.
Tia Goodson, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Create Baltimore, said at the board meeting that Artscape 2026 will have the same footprint that it did in 2025, when it moved from Midtown and Station North to downtown, near City Hall, the War Memorial Building and War Memorial Plaza.
Goodson said Mayor Brandon Scott will announce the dates for all of the city’s major warm weather festivals in mid-December; will announce the headliners for Artscape in mid-January, and will announce the headliners for the AFRAM Baltimore festival in February.
In other news:
Murphy said Create Baltimore will continue to operate the Baltimore Farmers’ Market in 2026. She told the board that the market had approximately 65 percent more visitors in 2025 than it had in 2024, and that Top of the World had approximately 40 percent more visitors this year than it did in 2024.
Murphy said Create Baltimore has put a pause on leasing studio space to new tenants at the School 33 Art Center at 1427 Light St. in South Baltimore until it comes up with a firm plan for making certain capital improvements to the building and redefines more precisely who it wants as tenants. She said current tenants are allowed to stay in the building during this pause period.
Based at 7 St. Paul St., the independent arts agency shares space with a city agency, the Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture & Entertainment. Create Baltimore has 33 employees, 16 full-time and 17 part-time, and is in the process of hiring more.
In the spring I got wind that no one at BOPA could find the documentation to prove Top of the World’s right to rent the space and told Fred Shoken, who, without compensation, found all of it. First, he looked up the deed for the World Trade Center, but that didn’t provide details of the lease agreement between the city and the state. Then he found an article from the Baltimore Sun in 1977 which referenced the lease agreement that went to the state Board of Public Works. He googled the Board of Public Works and date and found the transcript of the meeting, then found transcripts with extensions of the agreement in 1995 and 2005. He also found another newspaper article about changing the agreement in 2005, to allow for the sale of the building which never went through. I don’t know if the leadership of the current iteration of BOPA knows what Fred did, but I do know Fred is a Baltimore treasure!