Angelos Likely To Keep His Orioles Business In Baltimore

There may be a stadium-village in the cards at Camden Yards.

It appears that the Angelos family intends to keep its Major League Baseball Baltimore Orioles business in town. According to the Baltimore Sun, Orioles chairman and CEO John Angelos in a September 1st, memo told employees that he looks forward to signing a new lease with the Maryland Stadium Authority, keeping the team at Camden Yards. “As a lifelong Baltimorean I very much look forward to signing on behalf of the Club.” The state of Maryland is willing to spend more than $1.2 billion to upgrade Baltimore’s baseball and football stadium. The Orioles stadium was a key component of redevelopment of the inner harbor area in the 1980s and 1990s. The football stadium was an add on and was conceived during a National Football League expansion process in the early 1990s. Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell took the Maryland offer and moved his business to Baltimore in 1996.

Angelos said in the memo that the lease would be part of a broader “memorandum of understanding” underscoring the team’s “special relationship with the State of Maryland and the Greater Baltimore area” and highlighting “our philosophy of what true private-public partnership should be about.” In other words, there will be some sort of stadium-village concept involved as Angelos spelled out clearly saying “redeveloping the Camden Yards Sports Complex into a year-round Live/Work/Play entertainment destination” would be a goal. The Orioles, the NFL Ravens and the local casino would be involved in whatever plan is developed. In 2021, Orioles ownership and the Maryland Stadium Authority agreed to a two-year lease keeping the team at Camden Yards through December 2023, with the team holding an option for a five-year extension. There have been rumors that Angelos was thinking of moving his business to Nashville.

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