McCormick West—pipedream or panacea?

Every year about this time, it seems like the only thing more predictable than the start of baseball season is a spike in the events calendar that finds many of us zig-zagging across the nation from trade show to trade show. No matter what end of the retail space you’re in, it also seems like spring brings with it a requisite stopover at Chicago’s McCormick Place.

It wasn’t long ago, in fact, that McCormick Place was such an integral part of the spring circuit that many of us would commonly ask our clients and colleagues (rhetorically of course) “So are we going to see you at the Chicago show this year?” To which they’d naturally reply, “Which one?”

In just a few short years, however, the once well-known Chicago circuit has become anything but routine. Were it not for next year’s International Home & Housewares Show, in fact, Chicago would not only play a smaller role in most retailers’ and manufacturers’ spring travel plans, it might not figure in their plans at all.

A big part of that change has to do with the decision of the Food Marketing Institute to hold its annual show in Las Vegas next year. That news, along with the return to Vegas of the National Hardware Show (after its current one-year hiatus in Orlando) has caused a significant shift in thinking for many executives in the retail space. Not only has Las Vegas successfully wooed some of the largest and most significant product shows serving the retail industry (CES, MAGIC, Hardware and FMI, among others) but Chicago, for its part, is losing favor as the default stopover on the spring circuit.

Chicago’s reaction has been to launch one of its most elaborate convention projects in decades: the ambitious addition of McCormick West. By the time the work is done in early 2008, McCormick will have added 60 meeting rooms and almost a half-million square feet of exhibit space. Which begs the question, Is a bigger McCormick really the answer to Chicago’s trade show woes? And, how does the city plan to fill all that extra square footage when it can’t even fill the space it already has?

The answer—at least as far as the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau is concerned—is that the expansion of McCormick will allow the city to be a contender when it comes to hosting mega shows the likes of CES. One of its stated goals of the addition of McCormick West, in fact, is to “allow new conventions and meetings to be booked in Chicago—many of which have been turned away in the past because of lack of space.…”

If only it were that simple.

During an interview with the organizer of one of the largest trade shows in the nation, it became clear to me that space is only one piece of the equation. The other pieces include hotel capacity, dining and entertainment options, climate and, of course, the cost of doing business—all of which have tipped the scales in favor of places like Vegas.

This means that if Mayor Daley truly hopes to rekindle Chicago’s trade show business, it’s going to take a lot more than the current if-you-build-it-they-will-come expansion mentality. That’s not to say the city isn’t doing great things to attract outsiders; the success of spectacular Millennium Park is one such example. But to win back trade show exhibitors (and their tens of thousands of attendees) it’s going to take a lot more than a new wing to McCormick Place.

Trade show attendees need incentives. And those incentives need to start with more competitive exhibitor rates, less nickel and diming by the convention center, and better, affordable hotel options.

I’ll be the first to admit that I love the city of Chicago. But like so many others in corporate America, I love it a lot less when it means having to justify to my cfo the extra costs it takes to exhibit at a Chicago trade show.