Future plans

with stores and vibrant nightlife, broadening the experience for fans and generating more tax dollars. Studies have shown fans, particularly millennials, increasingly prefer entertainment options beyond passively watching a game.

“Up until the 1990s, team owners had the view of capturing all the revenues. You didn’t want competition on the outside, which is kind of how casinos used to look at things,” Moag said. “That really started to change. You want to make that experience as special as possible.”

To address that, the stadium authority has begun discussing a number of proposals with the Orioles for attracting more people to the immediate stadium area, even on nongame days, said Thomas Kelso, the authority’s current chairman.

“What we’ve done over the past 25 years has been great,” Kelso said. “But I don’t think we need to be in that box.” restaurants, retailers and boost the economic energy of the city,” said Alan Rifkin, who is now counsel to the Orioles but earlier served as chief counsel to Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

Schaefer was Baltimore’s mayor when the Colts fled Baltimore for Indianapolis in the dead of night 33 years ago last week. The Colts left partly because the city and state wouldn’t commit to replacing the aging Memorial Stadium, where both the Colts and the Orioles played, and Schaefer wasn’t about to let the O’s go.

“He knew what that meant to the civic confidence of the city,” Rifkin said.

After Edward Bennett Williams, then the Orioles owner, testified that a new sports complex was needed not only to attract an NFL team but to keep the Orioles economically viable, state lawmakers approved both stadiums in 1987.

The state built Oriole Park at a cost of $106.5 million, plus $99.9 million for site acquisition. Another $18.6 million was spent for related costs, including restoration of the warehouse and Camden Station. The Orioles leased the ballpark for 30 years — through 2021 — and have an option to extend the lease for five more years. anything for income.”

Coates and others believe professional sports teams often hype expected benefits because “they’re selling something.”

“I do hear people say the opening of Oriole Park jumpstarted redevelopment for the entire city, and I think that’s an exaggeration,” said Louis Miserendino, a visiting fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute. “You don’t have to look far to see it hasn’t translated into an influx of development even within a mile or quarter-mile of the ballpark.”

Schmoke, who served three terms as mayor, has heard those arguments before, but said “there are certain types of activities that bring such important intangible benefits that they are worth investing in.”

John Angelos, the Orioles’ executive vice president, said: “If Camden Yards isn’t a great investment, then no sports facility is, because you’re talking about [attendance] approaching 70 million people. No one ever projected that. If the Orioles had averaged a couple million a year, that would have been considered a success.”

The stadium has drawn 67.3 million fans in 1,974 dates — an average of about 2.7 million a season and 34,000 per game, according to the club.

In their last 10 seasons at Memorial Stadium, the Orioles dipped below 2 million a year in attendance four times. The team topped 3 million in nine of its first 10 seasons at the new stadium. Attendance declined after that as the club endured 14 straight losing seasons ending in 2012.

“We’re in the best sport for generating economic tourism. It’s a high-volume, low price-point sport,” said Angelos, citing the number of game days and the relative ticket affordability.

Spending associated with games at Oriole Park averaged $331.3 million in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, according to a recent study for the stadium authority by

For now though, the authority is talking about a number of proposals with the team in and around Oriole Park, Kelso said. One might be post-game concerts near Camden Station, the former home of the Sports Legends Museum. Some of the building is currently leased month to month to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum while the stadium authority considers its options.

Another proposal would relocate the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network’s production studios from the warehouse to Camden Station so fans could watch programming.

The goal would be to create some of the energy found on game days on Eutaw Street, the plaza between the stadium and the warehouse, where fans mingle and the smell of barbecue and hot dogs permeates the air.

“It’s not impossible that there could be a venue inside the stadium that is open every day of the year so that people can come, they can see into the stadium,” Kelso said. “Maybe it’s a bar or restaurant — something that gets people in the habit of coming to Camden Yards for something other than just a sporting event.”

While Dempsey’s Brew Pub & Restaurant in the warehouse opens onto Eutaw Street and offers a glimpse of the baseball field, Kelso is thinking of something even more connected to the ballpark.

In nearby neighborhoods, where there were fears about traffic congestion and noise before the ballpark opened, Oriole Park is generally perceived as an asset.

“Nothing really came true about what we anticipated — not being able to get home and having detours,” said Sharon Reuter, president of the neighborhood association in Ridgley’s Delight, a small neighborhood next to Camden Yards. “We are able to get in and out of the neighborhood pretty easily.”

Reuter said the neighborhood relies on parking enforcement officers to keep fans from parking illegally. “As long as they have the manpower to do ticketing and towing, then that works out.”

As for noise, she said, it’s not all bad.

“Yes, you can hear the cheers and the crack of the bat if you’re in the yard. But it’s not like a terrible noise. It’s like a party. We can almost tell what’s a double, or what’s a single and a home run.”