USA - Chicago mayor Richard Daley has suggested McCormick Place convention centre lay off ’99 per cent’ of its employees and instead allow show organisers to hire their own contractors.
After losing a string of big shows, the venue is desperately re-evaluating its policies to discourage further events from moving.
Speaking to reporters after the formal opening of the BIO 2010 convention at McCormick Place, the mayor said the venue should cut almost all its staff, rent the space out, and allow organisers to “take the space, and contract everything out”.
“They get their own contractors and sub-contractors. They get their own workers. They do everything for the show, and McCormick Place does nothing except rent the space. Get out of that business. It should be basically a shell.”
CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), Jim Greenwood, said competition for the show from other venues is stiff.
“Certainly Chicago is an expensive place to hold a convention,” he says. “If it becomes less expensive to hold a convention in Chicago, we’ll be more likely to come back.”
BIO 2010, the fifth consecutive BIO convention to be held in Chicago, is expecting more than 15,000 attendees, who will bring an estimated USD$25m in to the city’s economy.
Daley’s comments take the idea of cost-cutting even further than suggestions recently made by the city’s interim board.
