From the bleachers of Wrigley Field to the plush seats of the Lyric Opera, Chicago has long been a center of real entertainment with real performers, an unaffected city that likes its diversions live.
But with Walt Disney Co. and Steven Spielberg dreaming up huge “virtual reality theme parks” for Chicago, the City that Works stands on the brink of becoming a national center for high-tech fantasies–the City that Zaps, Levitates, Escapes and, promoters hope, Spends.
On Wednesday, Disney announced plans for its largest entertainment complex outside of its theme parks, a 90,000-square-foot computerized family playland located a block off North Michigan Avenue.
DisneyQuest, as the facility will be named, is scheduled to open in 1999, a year after Disney rolls out the first such cyberpark in Orlando.
The proposal follows, and dwarfs, a plan by Spielberg’s GameWorks to build a 30,000-square-foot virtual reality arcade and eatery geared toward the nightclub set, to be located a few blocks from DisneyQuest in the River North neighborhood.
Disney officials declined to comment on the cost of the project, but sources said that the GameWorks in Seattle, about one-third the size of the proposed DisneyQuest, cost between $10 million and $15 million to build.
Together with recently announced plans for a 34-screen movie theater, theme bars and new hotels flanking Michigan Avenue, the new developments could make Chicago’s retailing center a nationally prominent tourist destination.
With the virtual reality parks, America’s titans of fantasy have thrown their corporate heft behind an already hot development concept: putting under one roof everything from outsized video games to restaurants to simulated time travel.
Yet even with those big names and bankrolls, serious questions remain about whether this latest retail trend is a true revolution or a marketing curiosity along the lines of 3-D movie glasses and Beta-format video.
After all, the unquenchable thirst for ever-more novel and sophisticated technology that fuels these ventures also threatens to make them obsolete.
“We started with Atari and now we’re all the way here,” said Jamie Constantopoulos, 16, after he dismounted a simulated ski machine at Dave and Buster’s on North Clark Street. But “pretty soon, this will look old-fashioned. There’s always that new thing that comes and blows away the old one.”
Industry observers share that skepticism, even while acknowledging the financial resources and expertise of Disney and Spielberg.
“There will be a big initial buzz. People will try it once,” said Robert Moor, general partner of Moor + South, a Lake Forest-based real estate investment and management firm. “But does it have legs? That remains to be seen.”
In some ways, DisneyQuest and GameWorks are simply the natural extension of two other retailing trends known as “shoppertainment” and “eatertainment”–combination establishments such as the Disney Store and the soon-to-open Rainforest Cafe nearby.
Those concepts already have proven their success. But complexes centered on video games and virtual reality attractions have yet to do so, according to retail consultants.
Virtual reality is the computer technology that allows users to feel they are moving and acting in a computer-created environment. In DisneyQuest’s case, that might mean rafting down a prehistoric river. With GameWorks, it might mean shooting at bad guys in a 3-D, space-age setting.
What makes these new “theme parks” different from video arcades, promoters say, is the scale and the ability to immerse the consumer in virtual reality.
The Disney rafter, for instance, would be sitting in an actual rubber raft, which moves in reaction to imaginary terrain and real motions of the rider. The GameWorks shooter would sit strapped to a hydraulic chair that would lift him as high as 24 feet in the air, depending on his success in the game.
Disney officials say that DisneyQuest, to be located on the southwest corner of Ohio and Rush Streets, will contain four “zones.”
In the first, a visitor could design and ride her own roller coaster. The second zone would be devoted to competitive games, making heavy use of fictional Disney heavies as opponents. The third zone is supposed to be devoted to “expression and invention,” while the fourth contains classic rides and games. Eateries are spread throughout.
Disney officials say they are looking at other cities as well, but that for at least a few years, Chicago will be one of only two sites for DisneyQuest. It also will be a major new presence for Disney–behind only the theme parks in Los Angeles, Orlando, Paris and Tokyo in size.
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According to Disney executives, Chicagoans have always been well represented among visitors to DisneyWorld.
“Chicago has been a tremendous market for the theme parks,” said Art Levitt, president of Disney Regional Entertainment.
Chicago Planning Commissioner Chris Hill noted that the John Buck Co., Disney’s partner in the development, still must gain Chicago Planning Commission and City Council approval. But he said he was encouraged by what he had heard of the proposal.
Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday that he had met recently with Disney chief Michael Eisner and was excited about the project.
GameWorks, already open in Seattle, Las Vegas and Ontario, Calif., is more closely targeted to young adults who want to socialize in a hip, active, club setting, according to spokeswoman Melissa Schumer.
In addition to “edgy” games, GameWorks features a quieter “loft,” with food and alcohol. There visitors can play “classic” video games like PacMan, set in cherrywood cases–a wink at retro fashion and nostalgia. Or they can sign onto computer terminals, choose cartoon icons to represent themselves, and engage in anonymous cyberchat with other people around the room.
Strange, perhaps, but observers say it is an effective substitute for the singles’ bar scene.
“What we found is that guys are going up to girls and offering to buy them games,” said Schumer.
Some of those who helped trailblaze River North as a tourist destination said the Disney and Spielberg plans would support Michigan Avenue without defacing it.
“I’m glad that Disney is off Michigan. I’d much rather have them on Rush Street, because I’d rather not have Michigan turn into a virtual reality theme park,” said Stanley Tigerman, the Chicago architect who designed the Hard Rock Cafe.
The projects are not without their skeptics. Bruno Ast, associate dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago, acknowledged that they would further enliven the downtown.
But he added, “It is a suburbanization of an urban place. . . . The City of Chicago is too beautiful to just push people indoors and place them in a synthetic environment.”
David Bishop, senior vice president of operations for Bensenville-based Namco Cybertainment, said the video game and virtual reality centers work best in tourist areas because “people get bored with it very quickly.”
“They can’t generate revenue over a long period of time if you have a lot of repeat business,” said Bishop, whose firm is the largest family entertainment center operator in the nation.
Disney’s Levitt conceded that virtual reality attractions have a short and costly lifespan.
“It is expensive to do. More than that, to come up with groundbreaking concepts is very demanding and difficult,” he said. But he added that with the talent and resources of Imagineering, the elite Disney laboratory for entertainment behind DisneyQuest, the theme parks should stay fresh.
Even so, observers are waiting to see something tangible.
“Right now it’s really sexy because there are big names attached to it,” Bishop said. “But this is a different business. And we’ll see what happens.”