The biggest venue in Chicago for trade show events (along with being the home of the Blackhawks - Go Hawks!) is McCormick Place. In fact, it is one of the largest venues for such events in the whole of North America. It is centrally located, just a few minutes from downtown Chicago and attracts almost three million visitors each year to more than sixty trade shows and conventions held there. That is why we located to this great city!
With more that 2.6 million square feet of exhibition hall floor space indoors, plus huge areas outdoors, Chicago trade shows organizers will never have the problem of outgrowing McCormick Place as a venue. With ceiling heights of up to fifty feet in some of the halls, no exhibit is going to be too large to be accommodated either. For conferences running alongside trade shows, there is facility to seat up to 18,000 people in a multitude of meeting rooms and theaters.
This venue implemented several changes to its policies in August 2010 related to the legislation passed in Illinois that is aimed at making big reduction in prices and providing better services for Chicago trade show organisers and exhibitors alike. In a nutshell, the changes are designed to allow work to be done by the exhibitors’ own staff and trade show organisers’ staff that up until that date, required union labor to be hired to complete the tasks.
This has a number of benefits for all exhibitors and perhaps for small exhibitors in particular. Regardless of the size of their stand, exhibitors can use their own full-time employees to get jobs done that would previously have been done by union labor. In addition, for those with portable exhibits and so on, the new policies regarding cars and small utility vehicles allow the exhibitors themselves to load and unload their vehicles and transport their stand to and from the halls without using any paid labor. This along with standardized straight time, overtime and double time for all work that needs to be carried out by many of the labor unions will result in a much better deal for all exhibitors.
