Maybe more of an LA Live than Time Square?
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blame clout
rahm wanted something and reinsdorf didn't want it big enough to compete with the UC |
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^ But that college team currently plays in a 17000 seat arena, so building something at that scale here would indeed have competed with United Center (21000 seats). Instead, the size ended up at 10000 seats. (Figures yanked from Wikipedia basketball capacities and rounded.)
I wonder if the Reinsdorf story is true. I think one of the selling points here was that it would be a more intimate arena (but not so small as UIC, 7000 seats), so spending a larger budget to build a far bigger hall was probably not a realistic consideration to begin with. |
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I'm glad it's not bigger. This arena is a great size for a lot of concerts.
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The size is a great fit for Chicago's event space portfolio, filling a key gap with a fully modern facility.
And it also offers a bonus all those other stadiums don't, namely that it's situated on the megalolpolis meeting campus -- 10000 is big enough a capacity that you could think of this as "McCormick Place NW" or "McCormick Place 5", and some conventions could well incorporate it into their programming. |
Well yeah, the entire point of this arena from the beginning was to supplement McCormick Place, not to act as a standalone venue for DePaul basketball. DePaul merely heard they were considering building an arena here and jumped on it. Of course the McPier wasn't going to say no to a tenant offering to foot a huge chunk of the bill in exchange for 18 days a year (or whatever it is) worth of use.
The narrative that this is being built exclusively or primarily as a DePaul Basketball Arena" is a grace perpetrated by the Rahm haters particularly Karen Lewis and the CTU. Don't we all remember the "Rahm is building a private university a free arena with TIF money" propaganda campaign? It's not even remotely true, but it seems to have set the narrative in a lot of Chicagoans minds regarding this project. Seems similar to the "Lucas Museum is a Star Wars Museum" tripe set forth during that debacle. |
^ Naturally it's happening because of the convention center there, which underlies the economics; I was referring more to the branding. Although it is nominally called the McCormick Place Event Center for now, DePaul is going to be selling naming rights to it, and the local press like Crain's always dubs it the "DePaul arena", so in the public's mind it isn't really being portrayed as a fifth McCormick building in the way that in the decades up to now all McCormick projects have been heralded as an "expansion of McCormick Place". In addition to your propaganda theory, I suspect Crain's and others are engaging in a little bit of clickbait by sticking to "DePaul arena" in headlines, given the number of DePaul people in their readership (but also because the temporary official name is a little clunky). (Maybe even McPier benefits from de-emphasizing the McCormick branding this time around, in order to reduce political friction if they seek to replace East with yet another building in the coming years.)
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^ Thanks - I was not in town when that was announced. Kind of emphasizes my point about branding giving the benign impression it's separate from McCormick (when in fact it's owned by McPier). So does that week's Crain's article when it introduces it as "The new home of DePaul University men's and women's basketball on the McCormick Place convention center campus". Not a big point either way though.
Can we just celebrate that it didn't come out as Guaranteed Rate Arena. |
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January 6, 2017
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Those big rounded corners remind me of 1980s arena architecture... like Target Center in Minneapolis or Kemper Arena in KC.
I thought we had moved past the age of blank, featureless facades on arenas. |
Any idea if the arena has hockey configuration? Or is this basketball only?
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^ Presumably the only key question is whether it's ready to have refrigeration coils running through the floor. It would probably be malpractice to design an arena without that ability, because who knows what tenants might be interested way down the road. Indeed, Chicago would be a good market for ice shows and skating competitions; why not steal some of Allstate Arena's business or try to get smaller-scale events?
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I like the giant eave though. Not just for its functionality, but as a FLW h/t too. |
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Wintrust Arena pictures from September, mostly from the McCormick Place rooftop garden:
http://wp.me/p7uLxw-178 And from December, without rooftop access: http://wp.me/p7uLxw-1EZ https://buildingupchicagodotcom.file....jpg?w=1000&h= https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui...&sz=w1366-h638 |
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