Meeting News - October 6, 2008 - (Page 18) Destination Insider: Chicago Edited by William Ng william.ng@nielsen.com Event Report Production Firm Runs Away with Bash at the Airport A newly built airport runway and a client with clout let Event Architects/Event Creative, a Chicago event management and production company, stage a one-of-a-kind event. The agency used the newest runway at O’Hare Airport as the setting for a gala benefit for 2,500 on Sept. 19. Runway 9 Left/27 Right, due to open in November, became the platform for the $10,000plus-per-table evening benefiting After School Matters. Not every nonprofit can gain access to such a unique venue, but Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and his wife, Maggie, served as hosts of this fundraiser, which also commemorated the O’Hare Modernization Project. As guests mingled, dined, and took in performances, commercial jets landed just a few hundred feet away. “It was amazing,” EA/EC partner Sean Cannon said. In the past, the 10-year-old event company has staged a fundraiser for senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign at the home of Oprah Winfrey, turned the Field Museum into a nightclub, and taken over the trading floor of the Rosemont Center, Meetings Venues Dodge Deluge A record 6.64-inch rainfall hit Chicago Sept. 13, flooding thousands of homes and businesses along sections of the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers and leading Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to declare Cook County a disaster area. The deluge briefly cut off access roads and damaged public transit to O’Hare Airport, but area meetings facilities largely escaped unscathed. “We were lucky with the timing,” said Grant Bailey, assistant general manager of the Rosemont Convention Center near O’Hare. The road leading to the venue’s loading docks flooded, but the deluge occurred over a weekend when no meetings were going on. Major airport hotels also stayed fairly dry, although the Hyatt Regency O’Hare was forced to close its garage during the flood. Facilities in Chicago’s central business district were unaffected. Interstate I-190, the expressway leading to O’Hare, was under water for about an hour, and elevated-train service to the airport was disrupted when a flooded tunnel led to a vault fire. The Blue Line’s last leg to the airport, now replaced by shuttle buses, is to resume in mid-October. Locals lamented the flooding of Gene & Jude’s, a historic hot dog stand south of O’Hare, but it was expected to reopen shortly after press time. In other Chicago news, the city’s Green Hotels 18 MeetingNews October 6, 2008 Chicago Stock Exchange, but this benefit was its greatest challenge, Cannon said. EA/EC had just six days to set up three main tents covering 10,000 sf, 230 tables, plus cooking and equipment tents, then wire them all for power, lighting, and AV, and then decorate them—a project that normally would take at least two weeks. Complicating matters, the sponsor upped attendance by 25 tables just a week before the event, said Fergus Rooney, another partner at EA/EC. Guests arrived for cocktails at a gallery tent, then went to a second tent housing a performance stage, and then had dinner in a third tent. Meanwhile, the first tent was transformed for after-dinner drinks and dessert. A pre-event sponsors’ reception took place in an airport hangar, and sponsors, media, and Initiative has challenged local facilities with the goal of achieving the highest number of Green Seal-certified hotels in the country by December. The environmental lodging designation sets standards in waste minimization, energy efficiency, water conservation, waste-water management, and green procurement. At least 24 hotels are working toward their Green Seal approvals. The 556-room InterContinental Chicago O’Hare, opened Sept. 8, boasts a green roof, offsets its power use with 100-percent renewable energy credits from wind, recycles all materials used at the property, and promotes a green meetings program. In the western suburb of Naperville, the recently opened Hotel Arista is poised to become Illinois’ first hotel to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. The 144-room luxury property, affiliated with Preferred Hotels & Resorts, forms the first section of CityGate Center, a 31-acre mixed-use center with shopping and entertainment. The Arista offers 10,000 sf of meeting space and innovative chef Jimmy Sneed’s signature restaurant, SugarToad. A 12,000-sf spa, salon, and fitness center is slated to open at the hotel this December. Friday, one of the area’s busiest periods. —Sean Cannon, partner, Event Architects/Event Creative, of the timing of the exclusive gala benefit it produced at O’Hare Airport for nonprofit After School Matters And this “off atallp.m.kicked 5 on a ” guests all had to be moved from, and back to, different parking areas. “The guests got to ride down the length of the runway, about a mile and a half,” Cannon said. Every vendor, staff member, sponsor, and guest—including 250 After School Matters teenagers—had to go through airport security and be shuttled in trolley buses to reach the site. Just directing people how to get to the site and making sure everyone was prepared for the security check was a challenge, Rooney said. And all this kicked off at 5 p.m. on a Friday, one of the area’s busiest periods, said Cannon. Partners Rooney, Cannon, Gabrielle Martinez, and Lional Rivero-Cannon created a minute-byminute production to bring it all off. “There wasn’t any room for error,” said Cannon. r www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com
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