End of an ESPN Era

I was very upset to discover that the ESPN Zone in Baltimore is no longer with us. We rounded the corner, and I found a bunch of boarded up doors and windows. What's up with that? Luckily, I'm trying to kick in all that researching knowledge I learned in college to find out what happened to this restaurant.

I am Googling...

Okay, okay, I know that you are all desperately wondering what happened to this landmark in the Inner Harbor. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun in June, Walt Disney Co. made the decision in June to shut down five ESPN Zones including the one in Baltimore. However, what made this one special was the fact that it was the original ESPN Zone. According to this article, this ESPN Zone had been open for 12 years. It was started more as an experiment by Disney, but it ended up eventually falling apart due to increased competition and the fact that the restaurant became more of a tourist attraction as opposed to a regular everyday restaurant. Personally, being a tourist, I enjoyed it, and I thought the food was very good. However, apparently Baltimore didn't worry about it enough, and it is the end of an era.