This story is below WBAL-TV's great Jayne Miller standards. It is pretty easy to ask the average Orioles fan if he or she likes the big new hotel that now dominates the skyline, as viewed from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Would you rather see this or this? (Please forgive the perspective differences. I'll try to find better comparison photos.)
I love the last "Viewing An Interloper" comment in Edward Gunt's April 21 Sun article. Yes, "the quirkiness of the Bromo Seltzer Tower" will be missed and it is a Baltimore landmark. But I hate the "It doesn't say Baltimore" statement. Modern can mean Baltimore. It just rarely does, unfortunately.
Did the city need a "Convention Center" hotel to stay competitive in the convention business? Likely, yes. (For more about that there is plenty of Baltimore Sun coverage here. Please note: the artist's rendering shown there is outdated.)
Hotels such as this are kind of limited in the shape they can take: The owner has to decide how many room it needs in order to make money. Then you have to worry about factors such as orientation (harbor view/Oriole Park view) and height limitations (Shock Trauma's heli-pad is nearby.) Would a round building have allowed a better view of the skyline? My guess is yes, but it would have had too many rooms facing west. Sunsets are nice, but that's not the Baltimore experience tourists want to remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment