The Cost of the New Chicago Fire

Chicago grew rich as the Midwest's hog butcher, and has fattened as "the convention capital of the U.S." As a centrally located air, rail, and highway hub, it is perhaps the most convenient of U.S. cities. It has fleshpots and fun spots. For expositions it has the Navy Pier, Soldier Field, the International Amphitheater, and Chicago Stadium. In 1960, Chicago outdid itself by building McCormick Place, an edifice alongside Lake Michigan that ran the size of six football fields, with 486,000 square feet of space on three levels. It soon became the site of the U.S.'s biggest trade shows. McCormick Place cost Chicago $35 million to build, and one boast was that it would be "more durable than the Colosseum."

Last week McCormick Place lay in a wild ruin of twisted steel, tumbled concrete and smoking ashes. It was the victim of a blaze that, in total money terms, rivaled the fire of 1871.

Giants & Minors. The biggest show of all--the 46th semiannual exhibit of the National Housewares Manufacturers Association--had been about to open. Nearly 1,240 exhibitors, ranging from giants like General Electric and Westinghouse down to minor manufacturers of shower curtains and shish kebabers, had set up exhibits and were prepared to write orders from buyers converging from all parts of the country. Then, late at night, fire suddenly broke out in a booth in the main exhibition hall. Within 15 minutes, McCormick Place was an inferno; because of the intensity of the fire and its rapid spread in all directions, investigators suspected that defective electrical wiring was the cause. Eight hours later, one watchman was dead and one of the world's great exhibition halls had been utterly devastated. The economic wreckage was incalculable.

The housewares manufacturers them selves lost $25 million in merchandise and displays. Some products were prototypes rushed to Chicago to impress the 60,000 buyers who would have wandered through McCormick Place during the five-day show. There were other irreplaceable losses: the pioneer Webcor wire recorder was part of the ashes, and so were six original 1921-model Dormeyer mixers. Still missing were $25,000 worth of diamonds that were to have been prizes.

About as bad was the loss in orders. Many exhibitors expected either to write large annual orders at this show or to use the exposition as an entree for future calls. "If a customer sees a model at a show," said Leonard Sandberg, sales vice president for the Libertyville, Ill., Metalex Corp. (sales: $1,000,000), "a picture will mean something to him when the salesman comes around. But how can you expect a salesman to carry a 2-ft. by 6-ft. metal room divider? Frankly, we don't know what exactly to do." The housewares men scrambled as best they could. Some salesmen did business out of attache cases or in hotel rooms; former White House Chef Rene Verdon, who was supposed to perform at McCormick Place for the Scovill Manufacturing Co., whipped up gazpacho and apricot mousse in a suite at the Drake Hotel.

Few Out-of-Towners? The real, long-term economic damage was done to Chicago itself. Following housewares, 31 other major shows were scheduled at McCormick Place in coming months. Some 1,300,000 out-of-towners would have attended Chicago exhibitions this year, contributing close to $325 million to the city's economy through their spending for rooms, meals, taxis, entertainment and purchases. The McCormick Place disaster may cut the take considerably.

By offering other facilities, the Chicago Convention Bureau by week's end had salvaged for sure 13 of the 31 scheduled exhibitions and expected to keep most of the rest. The bureau may have been whistling in the dark. Even while the wreckage smoldered, representatives of at least a dozen other convention-seeking cities flew into town. First they offered condolences. Then they set out to see how many lucrative conventions could be lured away to such places as Louisville, New York, Atlantic City and Houston.

Chicago's Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley, meanwhile, had another big, related problem. One of the mayor's first postfire acts was to appoint a panel to determine why a six-year-old exhibition hall that had been built to outlast the Colosseum had no sprinkler systems or fire walls, and had burned down. Wondering also were such insurance companies as Travelers, Continental, and Interstate Fire & Casualty, who had written $29,650,000 worth of insurance on McCormick Place on the say-so of their own inspectors, who estimated its maximum probable fire loss at less than 1% of the building's value.

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