McCormick Place

McCormick Place
Address	2301 S. Lake Shore Drive
Location	Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates	41°51′07″N 87°36′58″W
Owner	MPEA
Built	1958
Opened	November 1960 (November 1960)
Expanded	1986, 1996, 2007, 2017
Construction cost	$2 billion
Theatre seating	4,250 (Arie Crown Theater)
Enclosed space
• Exhibit hall floor	2,670,000 sq ft (248,000 m2)
Parking	3 lots, 5800 total spaces
Public transit access	Green at Cermak–McCormick Place ME at McCormick Place
Website
mccormickplace.com

McCormick Place is a convention center in Chicago. It is the largest convention center in North America. It consists of four interconnected buildings and one indoor arena sited on and near the shore of Lake Michigan, about 2 mi (3.2 km) south of the Chicago Loop. McCormick Place hosts numerous trade shows and meetings. The largest regular events are the Chicago Auto Show each February, the International Home and Housewares Show each March, the National Restaurant Association Annual Show each May, and the International Manufacturing Technology Show in the fall every other year.

History

As early as 1927, Robert R. McCormick, a prominent member of the McCormick family of McCormick Reaper/International Harvester fame, and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, championed a purpose-built lakeside convention center for Chicago. In 1958, ground was broken for a $35 million facility that opened in November 1960, and was named after McCormick, who died in 1955. The lead architect was Alfred Shaw, one of the architects of the Merchandise Mart. This building included the Arie Crown Theater, designed by Edward Durell Stone. It seated nearly 5,000 people and was the second largest theater (by seating capacity) in Chicago.

The original McCormick Place, completed in 1960, seen in 1966 from Lake Michigan before its destruction by fire in 1967.

Lakeside Center looking south from Lake Shore Drive and 18th Street in 2007

The 1960 exposition hall was destroyed in a major fire on January 16, 1967, despite being thought fireproof by virtue of its steel and concrete construction. At the time of the fire, the building contained highly combustible exhibits, several hydrants were shut off, and there were no sprinklers on the main floor where the fire started. Thus the fire spread quickly and destructively, taking the life of security guard Kenneth Goodman.

The fire was investigated by a team led by Rolf H. Jensen, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, who later went on to found RJA Group. Many lessons were learned and multiple building, electrical, and fire codes for the city and worldwide were amended to avert a repeat situation.

Although many wanted to rebuild the hall on a different site, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley elected to rebuild on the foundations of the burned building. The new design of dark steel and glass, by Gene Summers of C. F. Murphy and Associates (and formerly of Mies van der Rohe's office) contrasted markedly with the white look of the structure that had burned. On January 3, 1971, the replacement building, later called the East Building and now called the Lakeside Center, opened with a 300,000 square feet (28,000 m²) main exhibition hall. The Arie Crown Theatre sustained only minor damage in the 1967 fire, and so was incorporated into the interior of the new building. The theater, with the largest seating capacity of any active theater in Chicago (the Uptown Theatre having more seating, but currently closed), underwent major modifications in 1997 to improve its acoustics.

Parts of McCormick Place were transformed into a makeshift hospital amid the COVID-19 pandemic

On March 27, 2020, the United States Army Corps of Engineers announced that the complex would begin transforming convention space into a 3,000-bed hospital in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis affecting the Chicago area. The $15 million project was paid for by FEMA and was scheduled for completion on April 30.

In 2021, it was proposed to turn Lakeside Center into a Rivers Casino, as part of the Chicago Casino Proposals.

In a move to help birds avoid colliding into its windows, McCormick Place Lakeside Center implemented a project in 2024 to make its windows more visible. The project, which cost $1.2 million and took three months to complete, was initiated following an incident in 2023 when, on a single night at the height of the fall bird migration, nearly 1,000 birds collided into the building's windows and died. The modified windows are covered with an array of small white dots designed to be visible to birds. (The dots were applied to the building's existing windows on sheets of adhesive film; the film was later removed, leaving the dots in place.) The windows at McCormick Place Lakeside Center encompass an area equivalent to two U.S. football fields, or roughly 2.6 acres.

Additions

The North Building, located west of Lake Shore Drive and completed in 1986, is connected to the East Building by an enclosed pedestrian bridge. In contrast to the dark, flat profile of the East Building, the North Building is white (as the original building was), with twelve concrete pylons on the roof which support the roof using 72 cables. The HVAC system for the building is incorporated into the pylons and give the building the appearance of a rigged sailing ship. The North Building has approximately 600,000 sq ft (56,000 m²) of main exhibition space.

The South Building, dedicated on December 12th, 1996, and designed by tvsdesign, contains more than 1 million sq ft (93,000 m²) of exhibition space. It more than doubled the space in the complex and made McCormick Place the largest convention center in the nation. The South Building was built on the former site of the McCormick Inn, a 25-story, 619-room hotel built in 1973 as part of the McCormick City complex and demolished in 1993 when ground was broken for the South Building.

McCormick Square flanked by the West Building (left) and Hyatt Regency Hotel

Grand concourse looking west in 2007.

On August 2, 2007, McCormick Place officials opened yet another addition to the complex, the West Building, also designed by tvsdesign and costing $882 million and completed eight months ahead of schedule. The publicly financed West Building contains 470,000 square feet (44,000 m²) of exhibit space, bringing McCormick Place's total existing exhibition space to 2.67 million square feet (248,000 m²). The West Building also has 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²) of meeting space, including 61 meeting rooms, as well as a 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) ballroom, the size of a football field and one of the largest ballrooms in the world.

McCormick Place continued to expand in October 2017 with the opening of Wintrust Arena, a 10,387-seat arena situated on Cermak Road just north of the West Building. The new facility hosts DePaul Blue Demons men's and women's college basketball, and the WNBA's Chicago Sky. The new arena boasts 22 suites, 479 club seats, and 2 VIP lounges. The arena is also equipped to host concerts, sporting events, meetings, and conventions in conjunction with the rest of the McCormick Place complex. Sporting events such as gymnastics and volleyball are also held in the McCormick Place buildings in addition to the arena.

Archival materials are held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. The McCormick Place on the Lake 1971 Collection includes photographs, drawings and project files documenting its construction.

South of the center is McCormick Place Bird Sanctuary, created in 2003. The northern end includes a recreated prairie, covering the roof of the center's underground carpark, and so requiring the use of shallow-rooted plants.

Public transit

McCormick Place is served by the Chicago Transit Authority’s bus and ”L” (rapid transit) systems; by Metra, Chicago’s commuter rail network; and by the South Shore Line, an interurban passenger rail service that runs between Chicago and South Bend.

Metra Electric trains—which run between the Loop and points south—stop at an eponymous station underneath McCormick Place. South Shore trains also stop here, but only on weekends and during special events, and will not board northbound nor discharge southbound passengers due to a non-compete agreement with Metra.

At the street level, CTA’s #3 and #21 bus lines—which run north-south and east-west through the South and Southwest Sides, respectively—serve McCormick directly. Cermak-McCormick Place, a station on the “L”’s Green Line, lies two blocks west of the convention center's westernmost entrance.

Busway

The McCormick Place Busway runs 2.5 miles (4.0 km) from Lower Randolph between Michigan and Columbus in downtown Chicago to the center. It uses the lower levels of the multilevel streets near downtown, and surfaces to follow the Metra Electric District right-of-way to outside the South Building of McCormick Place. Opened in 2002 at a cost of $43 million, it is meant to provide a true and unencumbered expressway for visitors to move between downtown hotels and the convention center, but is also used by buses for Soldier Field events, public safety workers, Metra, convention contractors, and Art Institute deliveries, along with providing a secure route for national and international government officials to utilize between the two points. It is not necessarily restricted only to buses, despite its name. It is also known as the "Mayor's Road" (as it runs to Maggie Daley Park, which was named in memoriam for mayor Richard M. Daley's wife), the "Bat Cave", the "Magic Road" and a "secret road". Road use is administered by the Chicago OEMC (Office of Emergency Management and Communications), and regular users are granted access cards. The convention center advertises the road as a benefit to potential customers.

Gallery

• 
  South Building from Lake Shore Drive looking northwest in 2007
• 
  West Building looking northwest from King Drive and 24th Place in 2007
• 
  West Building looking southeast from Indiana and Cermak (22nd St) in 2007

See also

• Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority
• List of convention centers in the United States

External links

• McCormick Place
• Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority