Who’s minding the store at McCormick Place?
Sure, they’re still answering the phones at the big convention hall on the lake.
But who’s in charge of the big picture? Who’s making sure McCormick Place will be humming with trade shows well into the 21st Century, now that taxpayers are spending more than a billion dollars to double its size?
Maybe I’m misreading the situation, but it looks like Chicago’s convention and tourism industry has been running on automatic pilot for the last few months.
That makes me nervous.
Conventions and tourism generate 3.6 million visitors and $2.7 billion a year for the Chicago-area economy. That’s enough to support 200,000 jobs at hotels, restaurants, rent-a-car agencies and the conventions themselves.
Three years ago we ranked as America’s convention capital. Now Chicago is No. 3, behind New York and Las Vegas, based on bookings of the top 200 shows. Stopping that slide was a big reason the Illinois legislature authorized construction of another mega-hall across Lake Shore Drive from the original building.
The new “McCormick III” won’t open until 1997. But the big shows are booked years in advance. Now is the time to get out there and sell, sell, sell.
So who’s leading the charge?
Consider the following:
– For almost a year, John Schmidt, chairman of the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, which governs McCormick Place, has been off in Washington or Geneva as a top Clinton administration trade ambassador.
– Three months ago Jim Reilly, the “McPier” authority’s full-time CEO, quit that post to take over as Gov. Jim Edgar’s chief of staff.
– Five months ago Gerald Roper quit his equally critical presidency of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, the agency that sells McCormick Place and Chicago to the world. Roper left to become head of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
I’m not suggesting our convention ship is utterly adrift.
Schmidt, who helped negotiate the GATT Uruguay Round, is one of Chicago’s more capable public-sector executives. His family remains here, and he keeps in touch by phone and flies in for board meetings.
Reilly’s interim successor, Jon Clay, is a steady hand, but his primary expertise is in construction management. That’s fine for overseeing completion of the new hall, but not for marketing the finished product.
And Roper’s interim successor, Mel Patla, is doing a credible job while the business chieftains who run the convention bureau plod ahead in their search for a permanent replacement for Roper.
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This year’s bureau chairman, a vice president of the American Medical Association named Robert Hobart, has engaged a search firm that produced a short list of candidates.
That’s fine. But lately some newspaper gossip columnists have been trial-ballooning other names that supposedly are in the running. These include James “Skinny” Sheahan, the city’s director of special events; Avis LaVelle, former press aide to Mayor Richard Daley and now to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala; former TV newswoman Mary Laney; former state lottery director Sharon Sharp; and an advertising exec from the Chicago Sun-Times.
The bureau calls these reports inaccurate and promises to announce its pick this week.
Let’s hope the choice is a good one. I know most of the above people. None is qualified to run the convention and tourism bureau.
What’s needed is an industry professional with international experience-someone who knows how to identify, and book, the mega-shows of the 21st Century. It wouldn’t hurt, either, if this someone had a winning personality and looked good in a business suit-qualities that once helped Joe Hannon become the best convention-seller Chicago ever had.
It would also be nice if the next bureau president grasped Chicago’s potential to attract non-business travelers. Recently the city’s tourism office was reduced to a minor function within the special events office at City Hall. Meanwhile, the cash-strapped convention bureau has assigned only one staffer to tourism.
That’s not good enough.
Not if the governor and the mayor are going to protect our multibillion-dollar stake in the convention and tourism trade. And not if we’re going to reclaim our title as the convention capital of America.