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December 6, 2025

Cambridge Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Cambridge

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What’s the Annual Economic Impact of the CBMM? Try $11.6 million. A Spy Chat with President Kristen Greenaway

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While most people on the Mid-Shore know that the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is one of the region’s most popular attractions, it doesn’t immediately cross their minds that it also has a huge economic impact on its community and even on a statewide level.

For the senior staff and trustees of the CBMM, this gap in awareness is an important one. Not only does this information help with the institution’s long-term plans, it also provides valuable metrics that help philanthropists, local governments, and other grant-making organizations make investments. But most importantly, it gives real time data to the local community that how relevant and critical the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is to local businesses.

A recently completed statewide impact study shows just how much of an economic contributor CBMM is to St. Michaels, Talbot County, the Mid-Shore,  and the state of Maryland. In 2019, visitors traveling specifically to visit CBMM from more than 50 miles generated $11.6 million in visitor spending for Talbot County – $11 million of which was spent in St. Michaels on local travel-related goods and services. The study also details that spending by out-of-state visitors who specifically traveled to St. Michaels to visit CBMM generated $6.5 million in net economic impact for Maryland.

Rockport Analytics, an independent research firm based in Annapolis, Md., conducted the study, analyzing CBMM’s 2019 data with statewide numbers. The conservative report measured the benefits of CBMM’s (1) ongoing operations, (2) visitors and local spending, (3) future construction and operational impacts that will result from CBMM’s campus expansion, and (4) the educational and community impact that CBMM provides to St. Michaels, Talbot County, and Maryland.

Other key findings:

  • CBMM-initiated visitor spending and expenses for operations in Talbot County reached almost $12.6 million, resulting in nearly $10.3 million in total economic impact for the county’s economy.
  • CBMM visitor, business operations, and capital spending generated more than $1 million in total tax revenue for Maryland.
  • For every $1 spent in Talbot County by CBMM’s business operations and visitors, the county’s economy retained about 82 cents. Around 14 cents of this total spending was retained as local tax revenue.
  • The state and local taxes collected from CBMM-supported spending were enough to educate 130 Talbot County public school students for one school year.
  • Without CBMM, Talbot County’s 37,181 households would each have to pay $46 more in state and local taxes to maintain current levels of tax receipts.
  • Forty-four cents of every dollar spent by CBMM visitors goes toward the wages of St Michaels’s workers in the town’s restaurant, lodging, and retail establishments.
  • CBMM visitor and business operations spending supported more than 250 direct jobs in Talbot County.
  • CBMM’s Phase 1 building expansion will bring $4.2 million value-added for Talbot County and is projected to contribute $3 million in Talbot County wages.

Rockport Analytics used the IMPLAN modeling system to translate CBMM related spending into local economic benefits. The IMPLAN model (or “impact analysis for planning”) is a non-proprietary database and modeling system that is considered industry standard and has been used by government agencies, academia, and leading researchers for more than 40 years to carry out economic impact studies.

Last year, CBMM welcomed more than 84,000 guests. Through volunteer programs, internships, and apprenticeships, CBMM also builds human capital, serving as a valuable resource for the development of basic and specialized job skills. CBMM is now engaged in certified workforce training with the Shipyard’s four-year apprenticeship program, which is registered by both the U.S. and Maryland departments of labor. The $5 million Maryland Dove contract awarded to CBMM in 2019 generated 10 jobs and a new attraction for visitors.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum officially reopened to the public at the end of June, with everyone on campus required to follow the Town of St. Michaels ordinance and wear facial coverings inside buildings at all times and outdoors when within six feet of other guests. Additional information on CBMM’s enhanced health and comfort measures and operational changes for reopening can be found at welcome.cbmm.org.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Exit Interview: Patti Willis Looks Back at Healthcare’s Transition on the Mid-Shore

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The Spy “Exit Interview” series is part journalism and part oral history. Over the last eleven years, the Spy has interviewed dozen of local leaders at the moment of their retirement to reflect on their work and some of the challenges they have faced in their professional careers.

We continue with our chat with Patti Willis, Shore Regional Health senior’s long-serving vice president for communications.

For more than four decades, Patti has had a front-row seat in watching the rapid and sometimes controversial health care changes on her native Eastern Shore. In her Spy interview, she recounts the transition from independent community hospitals to one sizeable regional organization serving five counties.

Patti also shares what lessons she’s learned over this complicated process, as well as her observations about how these changes have sometimes been emotionally difficult for many who grew up or had been born in the hospital just down the road from them.

This video is approximately twelve minutes in length. For more information about work of Shore Regional Health please go here.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

A Gathering Mid-Shore Mental Health Storm with Beth Anne Langrell

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In the abstract, most people who are tracking coronavirus are aware that one of the side effects of the pandemic is the toll COVID is taking on the mental health in the country. With social distancing, mass unemployment, and a temporary halt to a certain way of life in America, levels of depression and anxiety were predictably going to go up.

But at the local level, it is hard for even the most perceptive of us to see the impact on those severe consequences in our communities where talking about one’s mental health is generally not a topic of the day.

We do however have some soft data that suggests that a mental health crisis is started to form. One shocking figure along those lines was the fact that For All Seasons, the region’s largest private mental health provider, has had over 250 new clients since Maryland’s stay-at-home order began in the middle of March.

One person seeing this challenge upfront and personal, is Beth Anne Langrell, Chief Executive Officer, for For All Seasons. In our Spy chat, Beth Anne provides in stark terms the state of the Mid-Shore’s mental health as well as the fragile nature of the agency’s budget to provide for this significant demand.

This video is approximately for five minutes in length. For more information or to make a donation to For All Seasons please go here.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.