Chicago’s famous Magnificent Mile, struggling since the COVID crisis, enjoyed two tasty pieces of very good news last week.
One was the soft opening of The Hand and the Eye, a high-end collection of live performance venues designed for magic that will be run partly as a member’s club while also offering a retro single evening out in the company of magicians and magic lovers from all over the world.
The health care executive and magic fan Glen Tullman has dropped some $50 million of his own money on this passion project, asking for nothing from the city or state. We’ve been inside a couple of times already and, as designed by the Broadway and hotel designer David Rockwell, it’s a gorgeous restoration of the former McCormick Mansion just west of Boul Mich, at Ontario Street. Tullman told us that his redeveloping of the former home of Lawry’s The Prime Rib has resulted in other vacant property nearby sparking interest from potential tenants. We don’t doubt that.
Just as this nod to Chicago’s long history of prestidigitation was opening its doors, the National Confectionery Sales Association (NCSA) announced that Michigan Avenue had been chosen over Orlando and New York City be the home of its new Candy Hall of Fame experience, expected to open next summer at 830 N. Michigan in a multi-level space totaling 60,000 square feet.
We can vouch for the eye-popping aesthetic quality of The Hand and the Eye, down to the retro tableware in the dining room, but we’ll have to see about the Candy Hall of Fame — although the latter name has the ability to attract far more people than the former’s intentionally boutique offering costing at least $225 to walk through its doors.
Both ventures, though, are claiming they will create around 200 new jobs each.
Candy stores such as Dylan’s Candy Bar, started by Dylan Lauren, the daughter of Ralph Lauren, and Jeff Rubin’s It’Sugar, which went in and out of bankruptcy in 2020, are often seen as a mixed bag for high-end retail destinations like Michigan Avenue. In the United Kingdom, there has been significant media backlash against the proliferation of “American style sweetshops” in that nation’s high profile retail districts, such as London’s Oxford Street — typically bright, garish locations with candy piled high — due to their dispensing of an unhealthy product, their high profit margins, their fly-by-night nature and their magnetic appeal to children causing stress to their parents. They certainly are not typically seen as the equivalent, say, of a department or clothing store. Which in many cases they have replaced.
The NCSA, of course, is an organization with integrity and a reputation to protect, and what is planned for Chicago won’t be merely a sugar rush, although Rubin is the one working on the project (It’Sugar already has locations at both 717 North Michigan and on Navy Pier). Interestingly, the NCSA has hired David Korins, the designer of both “Hamilton” on Broadway and “Hamilton: The Exhibition” that popped up in 2019 on Chicago’s Northerly Island. Korins is one of the country’s leading conceptual designers and his shop is one of the Rockwell Group’s leading competitors. We can hope Korins has had a look inside “The Hand and the Eye” and decided to raise his game accordingly.
Our hope for the Candy Hall of Fame is that it truly tells the story of Chicago’s pivotal role in the manufacturing history of chocolate and sugary treats, a vital part of our heritage, having been the home of the likes of Ferrara, Fannie May, Mars, Brach’s, Blommer and Wrigley, among many others. According to the University of Chicago, Charles F. Gunther was the first to introduce caramels to America; he sold them from his Clark Street shop. During prohibition, many of the city’s taverns were converted to candy shops (at least in the front room). And by the early 1900s, the moniker “Candy Capital of the World” was being applied to Chicago.
So if the Candy Hall of Fame turns out to be little more than a giant emporium of sugar for sale we will be disappointed, although we have faith in Korins, who will be working with the experience designer Janet T. Planet, who among other things led the design work for Virgin’s foray into the cruise ship business. It’s a promising array of designers.
The good news about both of these new attractions is that they will be unique to Michigan Avenue. The street cannot, of course, continue to rely entirely on retail in an era when even Saks Global has filed for bankruptcy protection (it is expected to emerge this summer). Experiential attractions that draw visitors both domestic and international must be part of its new mix and, at this point, rents on the prestige address have fallen to the point where they are more viable.
But museums and branded experiences come in all shapes and sizes, and experience has taught us that they are of varying quality. They’re also not an inherently stable industry, and we’d like to see Michigan Avenue also gaining more dining options and fresh quality retail.
Still, these two new ventures are concrete signs of rebirth, especially when added to the arrival of the retail outlet Hotel Chocolat (sugar is as big as ever) across from the Water Tower Place vertical mall, soon to be redeveloped, and the new Chase Banking Center filling long-vacant space directly across Michigan Avenue from the mall. We’re still waiting for the redesign that will remove the dingy underpass at the top of the Magnificent Mile and better connect the street to the lake.
But we’re glad to welcome this pair of new private enterprises. The Mag Mile is central to this city’s history and identity; it feels like it is finally is waking up.
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