While their crabcakes may be more “meh” than “wow,” news that Phillips Seafood Restaurant is ending its lease at Harborplace after a run of 31 years quickly became the top story in Baltimore media yesterday. There’s a lot of symbolism to the departure of the last of the original tenants to occupy the centerpiece property of Baltimore’s tourism-centric revival.

Soon after CityPeek, a local hospitality and tourism website, posted three sentences about the eatery not renewing its lease and planning to vacate Harborplace’s Light Street Pavilion on Sept. 30, media heavyweights, led by The Baltimore Sun, were speculating about what it all meant.

The underlying message – stated more bluntly than the Sun’s circumlocution about Phillips leaving “without much explanation” – is that top retail operations are bailing on Harborplace, the aging centerpiece of the Inner Harbor.

Harborplace management, General Growth Properties, overhauled the mall in 2005, adding sit-down eateries including Tir Na Nog, Edo Sushi and La Tasca, a tapas restaurant. But financial troubles persisted and the sprawling mall manager, with interests in 200 regional shopping malls in 43 states, filed for bankruptcy protection and reorganized.

The Baltimore Business Journal has been providing some extra context all week, with a series of numbers-driven stories on the recession’s effect on U.S. cities. Since 2008, Baltimore lost 9,100 retail and 4,000 hospitality jobs, the BBJ said, based on their review of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.

Yesterday’s news caught Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake unprepared as she walked into Harborplace for a noon photo op to hail the “grand opening” of Lenny’s Deli at the Pratt Street Pavilion. She acknowledged to the Maryland Daily Record that she knew nothing about Phillips moving out. She later offered this response to WJZ-TV:

“I love Phillips crabcake. I’m going to be sad to see them go, but I know I’ve talked to General Growth Properties and they already have a exciting tenant that signed up. You know, one door closes another one opens.”

Phillips says it wants to stay in Baltimore and one potential location wouldn’t be far away – the site of the ESPN Zone sports-themed restaurant that vacated the Power Plant building last year.

Resettling a few blocks east would keep Phillips on the water, which many customers say is the restaurant’s best selling point, but would leave a gaping hole at Harborplace until that promised new tenant arrives.