| Image from Chicago Tribune |
McCormick Place officials are aiming to vastly expand the amenities surrounding the convention complex to include more hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and an arena that could host large-scale corporate assemblies and potentially such collegiate sports as DePaul Blue Demons basketball, its top executive told the business community on Tuesday.
"What Las Vegas has that we don't have is a mega-hotel complex where 3,000 people can meet, eat, be entertained and sleep without ever going outside," Jim Reilly, CEO of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place and Navy Pier, said at a City Club luncheon. Orlando now offers similar amenities, he added.While this is encouraging, talk is cheap. We've been hearing about this for years now and as far as we can tell little action is really happening (here, here, here, here and ok we're bored with posting links).
We're probably being impatient, but there are only so many stories like this that we can read (well i guess not since it feels like this is pretty much all we read in regard to the topic).
To be a little more rational about this topic, this type of stuff obviously takes a long time to materialize. To the credit of the city, the new Green line CTA stop at State and Cermak is progress.
We will continue to follow this story as it obviously is important to the continued evolution of our neighborhood.
