Among Chicago business leaders and other worried citizens, the word Detroit often has functioned as a cautionary tale. The typical usage? “If Chicago is not careful, it will end up like Detroit.”
That’s outdated thinking, of course, thanks to the recent renaissance of the Motor City. And that was never more evident than last Friday night when a record 125,000 people came downtown to see Detroit’s tree-lighting ceremony, beating last year’s record of 105,000. Those figures are courtesy of the Visit Detroit tourism agency, which put out a striking Instagram video Monday showcasing packed streets, illuminated buildings and an ice rink filled with skaters of all ages and ethnicities. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, and the center of that large, much-maligned city never had looked more beautiful.
Cut to Chicago, which also had a busy weekend with traditional seasonal attractions such as a civic tree-lighting ceremony and a holiday market. There was much speechifying and our mayor trotted out his “best freakin’ city in the world” line.
But there were issues. Serious issues.
One was that it took hours to get anywhere. We heard from a reader who went with their family to see a Saturday night staging of “Annie” at the Chicago Theatre, leaving their suburban home at 4:45 p.m. for a 7 p.m. show, only to find themselves stuck within 2 miles of the theater for over 75 minutes due to police road closures and other traffic issues. By the time they had arrived at the lobby, it was close to 8 p.m. and Annie was already safe and sound with Daddy Warbucks. Our reader said she found a line of people stuck in the same traffic jam; it turned out that a good chunk of the audience had been immobilized behind the same barriers.
Such an incident puts a high-profile company such as Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which owns the Chicago Theatre, in a near-impossible bind; it can’t hold the show because of the people already there and it ends up disappointing half its customers. You don’t get a refund if you are late for “Annie.” What many people do in reaction to such a disappointment is decide to go and see “Frozen” in Aurora next year instead. And that’s a disaster for downtown Chicago.
What exactly was going on this past weekend? We suspect our reader was caught up in the chaos after a woman was shot in the Loop Saturday night and reportedly sought refuge inside the Macy’s department store (the crime-focused news site CWBChicago posted a photo of the injured woman on a gurney inside the open department store, surrounded by shoppers). Gunfire at the corner of State and Washington streets is not ideal when you are trying to sell a seasonal trip downtown to see “Annie,” or “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” or “The Joffrey Nutcracker,” or even visit the historic Walnut Room inside Macy’s itself.
Also over the weekend, there were reports of teen “takeovers” of some downtown streets, bringing forth a heavy police presence that inevitably makes it harder for those just trying to take in a show to get around since police are overcautious by nature. And the Chicago Theatre was in the middle of all of that stuff.
We’ve been seeing lighter than normal crowds at some of those shows this year; the combination of transportation challenges and a perceived lack of personal safety are contributing factors there.
We’re well aware that editorials such as this can make the problem they highlight worse. As Joe Ferguson, head of the Civic Federation, told us recently, one of the best ways to increase public safety is to have more people on the streets with more things to do. That’s irrefutably the case and we know lots of good people working to add those attractions and make them accessible to as many folks as possible. But we also have a duty to point out a situation where more attention needs to be paid, not just from a crime-prevention perspective but from an overall visitor hospitality standpoint, especially when it comes to those coming from long distances to visit our urban center. Lou Raizin, head of Broadway in Chicago, discussed with us recently the rise of the so-called night mayors in European cities (and some on this side of the Atlantic), public officials whose job it is to take care of those who work and play at night, a time when many big American cities see colossal amounts of economic activity.
Chicago could use a night mayor for the Loop. Starting now.
Contrast the situation this past weekend in Chicago not just with the fun times being had by record after-dark numbers in Detroit but the reports of record hotel rates in New York City, where a lack of supply and booming tourism are combining to make visiting the Big Apple at the Most Wonderful Time of the Year prohibitively expensive for many families. Obviously, we are entering the most lucrative time of the year for big city tourism; the people who are being discouraged right now are not likely to return on a frigid January evening. These are the weeks when everyone wants big city excitement: the lights, the tree, the ice skating, the feeling of a retro Christmas in an iconic American city with high-rises filled with color and seasonal excitement.
Detroit did not seem to have comparable problems this past weekend, at least as far as we can tell. Instead, all kinds of folks came together in an urban downtown that has been getting more and more attractive because the leaders of that city are focused on making it so, understanding as they do the economic benefits for residents. Detroit covers a vast area, and many vacant lots and signs of decay remain, but its renaissance has been led by its core and its heart. It does not seem to suffer from the downtown-versus-the-neighborhoods fight that roils Chicago. It’s all one there.
And thus we say, not for the first time, that Chicago’s Loop has to get more attention from City Hall before the decline of its crucial cultural sector gathers momentum that becomes very difficult to reverse.
There is a counternarrative that needs to begin immediately.
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