The economic center of Chicago ought to be riding high.
With Labor Day upon us, downtown and its close-by neighborhoods can look back on a summer of extraordinary activity. Lollapalooza saw record attendance, the NASCAR street race proved popular despite bad weather for the second year in a row and music festivals celebrated local tastes and talent. Finally, the Democratic National Convention landed after months of buildup, did its four-day infomercial thing and left after spawning little civic trouble — to Chicagoans' great relief.
The summer has amounted to weeks of Chicago showing off its most photogenic self, earning publicity and positive notice no amount of advertising can buy.
What’s the dividend for all this? Or, to recall Mike Royko’s unofficial Chicago motto, “Where’s mine?”
The check isn’t in the mail but those involved with planning the summer’s events insist it’s coming, made out to downtown-area businesses and their jobholders.
“We’re back on the radar with meeting planners,” said Michael Jacobson, head of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association.
Gail Spreen, a real-estate agent active in Streeterville civic life, said the summer’s big events drew dollars into Chicago but also something more long-term. “Lollapalooza, the Air & Water Show, the DNC — all were positive and people said they had a great experience. That’s what you want to hear,” she said.
But how do you measure that?
The Magnificent Mile Association, covering the North Michigan Avenue retail corridor, is trying. Denise Chudy, its director of marketing and communications, said it collects comments about its area from social media, publications and broadcasts, using an artificial intelligence tool from Meltwater.
Chudy said the positive-negative balance of comments is now 77% on the positive side versus 41% a year ago. “In prior years during the pandemic, the comments were mostly negative,” she said.
The down years occurred during the pandemic, when the premier retail street became plagued by crime and vacancy. Working with police, the association responded with seasonal events to beautify the street and make shoppers feel safe.
Empty storefronts are still near historic highs at around 33% of all space, but Gregory Kirsch, managing broker at Kirsch Agency, said commercial leasing is waking up. Vacancies are just starting to slip, he said. “We’re noticing a real uptick in touring activity [by potential clients]. Whether all these deals land is a different matter.”
Kirsch said landlords who have been stubborn about rents are just now starting to be flexible, perhaps influenced by the summer’s successes. He said even the business types take notice when Chappell Roan or Pink pack in the crowds on the lakefront. “That can overcome a lot of the negativity people might have had,” Kirsch said.
Chicago’s business vibe still has its issues though — its form of “long COVID.” State Street activity remains hurt by office workers’ reluctance to be back at their desks full-time, and by sinking enrollment at colleges and universities that are a backbone of the Loop. The old La Salle Street financial district drags its heels, and reviving it has become a perplexity for City Hall.
But as good as the summer has been, fall also plays into Chicago’s strengths. It’s traditionally a workaday season. Business conferences pick up. Farmers markets in the neighborhoods and dancing in Grant Park give way to PowerPoints in hotel conference rooms and vendors setting up at McCormick Place.
It still means money coming in from out of town, benefiting trade workers and hotel and restaurant crews. Starting Sept. 9, McCormick Place will host the largest event on its calendar this year — the International Manufacturing Technology Show. It has an estimated draw of 110,000 people, twice what the DNC brought in.
McCormick Place has recovered most of the business it lost when the pandemic shut down physical gatherings. The smaller conferences that Chicago hosts also are reviving — the so-called “in-house” meetings of businesses or trade groups that might be confined to a single hotel.
Last year, the city hosted more than 1,900 business meetings totaling more than 2 million attendees, said Choose Chicago, the local meetings promoter. That compares with 1,400 meetings and 1.6 million attendees in 2022.
The feedback about events this year, whatever their size, has been overwhelmingly positive, said Rich Gamble, interim president and CEO of Choose Chicago. The agency will do its own review of the DNC and NASCAR to see how the economic impact measured up against estimates, he said.
But he’s already found a halo effect. “We are already seeing an increased interest in our city, which will drive future meetings and events business and inspire people around the world to visit Chicago for decades,” Gamble said.
While the DNC earned rave reviews for the city, it didn’t live up to some billing. DNC planners oversold the prospect that delegates and other attendees would fan out to the neighborhoods, taking bus tours to soak in local culture.
“Other than maybe a private event at Wrigley Field, these people were never going to get far into the neighborhoods. There were too many parties and other things for them to do,” said one insider.
For restaurants, the DNC was hit-and-miss. Some downtown venues had plenty of open tables for dinner, when delegates preferred to be at the United Center for the big speeches, experts said. Others fared better for breakfast and lunch or by staying open extra late.
Along Fulton Market’s restaurant row, most owners were “pleased that it was much calmer in the streets for the convention than it could have been,” said Roger Romanelli, executive director of the Fulton Market Association. He said some kitchens were booked for private parties and consequently kept a low profile.
Hotels, too, grumbled about slow bookings for the DNC. “Some people were expecting the DNC to be a full sellout week,” said the hotel association’s Jacobson, but that was always unrealistic in a city of more than 45,000 rooms. The Airbnb factor and delegates doubling- or tripling-up on rooms also were factors, he said.
But the innkeepers have little to complain about. While occupancy rates still fall slightly short of pre-pandemic 2019, demand has emboldened operators to push rates higher than the averages from that year.
And hotels have plenty of dates to look forward to. Chicago is a mega-event town, whether geared to a particular industry, such as the PACK EXPO for the packaging trade that hits McCormick Place in November, or a more public affair like the Bank of America Chicago Marathon in mid-October, an unofficial end-of-summer herald.
The season just ended was great for the city, but it doesn’t need pop stars or warm weather to have a good time.
