This weekend in Chicago’s Loop, you can see Billy Corgan’s “A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which has 3,200 seats to sell.
The Chicago Philharmonic is playing “Home for the Holidays” Saturday at the Auditorium (3,901 seats). The Goodman Theatre (850 seats), of course, has “A Christmas Carol” all weekend. The James M. Nederlander Theatre has Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen,” which it hopes will play to 2,253 people each performance. Broadway in Chicago has fingers crossed that 2,344 Neil Diamond fans will show up each night to the Cadillac Palace Theatre for the reprise run of “A Beautiful Noise” and to “A Magical Cirque Christmas” at the 1,800 seat CIBC Theatre. And Straight No Chaser, an a-cappella group that originated in 1996 at Indiana University, will be aspiring to fill all 3,600 seats of the Chicago Theatre on Saturday afternoon.
Such is the pull of Thanksgiving weekend that the illustrious musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra even are willing to suspend their long-standing interest in Haydn, Mahler and Shostakovich and instead offer a live accompaniment to the movie “How to Train Your Dragon.” There are more than 2,500 seats waiting at Symphony Center, which the CSO hopes will be filled with kids, parents and grandparents, laughing and celebrating a weekend together.
Just look at all that stuff on one weekend, all within walking distance in just a few blocks (and this is not even a complete list). Such is the investment being made by cultural organizations, both for- and not-for-profit, in Chicago’s Loop. Outside of Manhattan, nothing is comparable in America.
There are more than 20,000 available seats downtown this weekend to performances of all kinds. The jobs being supported number in the thousands. Some of the employees are local and some from out of town, which means they are renting rooms and eating in our restaurants and drinking in our bars.
But tickets to entertainment events like those listed above are what economists call wholly perishable goods, which is to say that if they remain unsold at the start of the event then their value disappears entirely. They do not go back into the freezer or on a shelf. The economic activity is lost and the following year it is less likely to return.
And if audiences have been reading the news and start worrying about the safety of the CTA during their trip in from Forest Park or their ability to walk down State Street without getting caught in some teen takeover, a benign-sounding moniker for what turned out on a recent Friday to be a gathering with guns, the economic consequences are immediate.
With the official kickoff of the holiday season, Chicagoans need to remember that the Loop’s entertainment district is key to the economic fortunes of the entire city and we now have arrived at peak season.
For generations, this city has thrived on the desire of Midwesterners from out of town for a seasonal, big-city experience, a romantic vision of hot chocolate at holiday markets, noses pressed against department store windows, ice rinks, light shows, trolley rides and cozy restaurants filled with heaping portions and friendly staffers.
For those from Des Moines or Davenport, Kansas City or Kalamazoo, Chicago long has been that premier destination; we long have sold ourselves as a kinder, gentler, more affordable version of New York, where hotel rooms routinely cost $600 a night at this time of year. Caring for our guests is all our responsibility, for the benefit of their spending is shared.
Those who did not appreciate that before got a timely reminder when their most recent property-tax bills arrived in their mailboxes, reflecting depressed Loop values and a consequential shift of the burden to residential payers. So, yes, all Chicagoans have a stake in those tickets being sold, in Chicago retaining its pull during the holiday season, in it maintaining its reputation as having an exciting and welcoming downtown, a place where an analog, old-school family Christmas still is on offer.
This year, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure all of this continues. It is a mistake to take any of it for granted. A couple more of the wrong headlines, as quickly amplified by those who do not have our best interests at heart, and we are in serious trouble.
Perhaps there is something of interest in the above list. Certainly, you’d be doing your city a favor by coming with your family downtown.
“Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city,” sang Petula Clark years ago. “Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty. How can you lose? The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares . . . ”
That is what we sell at the holidays, folks. But we have to live up to the expectations of our guests.
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