The Greater Baltimore Committee usually holds its annual meeting in Baltimore City, in locations such as the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel (2025 and 2022) and Baltimore Peninsula (2023). In 2024 the GBC’s annual meeting was at Tradepoint Atlantic in southeastern Baltimore County. Members gathered virtually in 2020 and 2021.
This year the GBC will have its 71st annual meeting in a new location.
“For the first time in GBC’s history, our signature Annual Meeting will be held in Howard County,” said President and CEO Mark Anthony Thomas, in an email message about the event.
Registration is now open for the event, which will take place on Thursday, Oct. 8, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia, Md.
The meeting is expected to draw more than 500 business, government, nonprofit, education and civic leaders. It’s being held four years after the GBC, which was founded in 1955 by civic leaders James Rouse, Frances Morton, David Woods and 80 others to revitalize downtown Baltimore, merged with the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB), which included Baltimore City and surrounding counties. The theme of this year’s event is BOLD. REGIONAL. CONNECTED.
The location is “more than a change in venue,” Thomas said in his message. “It reflects the regional organization GBC has become and gives us an opportunity to celebrate the partners who helped make that transformation possible.”
“As the Baltimore Region competes for talent, investment and business growth, success increasingly depends on the ability to think – and act – beyond jurisdictional lines,” the GBC’s website states. “This year’s Annual Meeting puts regionalism at the center of that conversation, highlighting how cross-sector collaboration and alignment are driving measurable economic progress.”
Why Howard County? Thomas went on to write in his email message:
The regional collaboration we are advancing today builds on the foundation established by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore and its public- and private-sector partners.
When EAGB and GBC merged in 2022, those partners helped create a stronger regional institution with the relationships, reach and capacity to advance a shared economic agenda.
Howard County has played an especially important role in strengthening the regional alliance that emerged from that merger. Under the leadership of County Executive Calvin Ball and Economic Development Authority CEO Jennifer Jones, the county remained deeply engaged as regional partners came together through GBC to pursue a federal Tech Hub designation, develop a unified regional brand and advance other critical economic initiatives.
That collaboration helped solidify the relationships, trust and shared sense of purpose required for the new GBC to operate as a truly regional institution. Holding our Annual Meeting in Howard County gives us an opportunity to celebrate that leadership and recognize the partners who have helped turn the promise of the merger into meaningful regional action.
Through GBC, partners have aligned around a shared economic vision, a regional brand identity and a more coordinated approach to pursuing economic opportunities.
There is still significant work ahead. But this Annual Meeting will celebrate the next phase of our transformation and help build the confidence in our regional market that we need to compete more effectively.
Holding the event at Merriweather Post Pavilion is “especially fitting,” Thomas said, because it’s “one of the Baltimore Region’s most recognizable cultural assets and reflects GBC’s work to elevate the economic importance of our cultural industries.”
More than $2 billion in cultural-industry investments, he noted, are “strengthening communities, attracting talent and visitors, supporting creative businesses and contributing to a more compelling regional identity.”
More information about the annual meeting is available at: www.gbc.org.
