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Jan 6, 2025 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
The concept of reshoring in manufacturing has picked up momentum in the past four years as the COVID pandemic exposed the fragility of supply chains around the world while the necessity of producing goods closer to their consumption points gained great credibility.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
When you’re talking conventions, meetings and conferences in Chicago, the big elephant in the room, of course, is the McCormick Place Convention Center on the lakefront. With 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space, it’s the largest facility of its kind in the U.S. Las Vegas is No. 2, at 2.5 million square feet after a recent expansion, and No. 3 is Orange County, at 2.1 million. McCormick is big, yes.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
Is wine tourism an actual industry in Illinois? The answer to that could be found on a recent October weekend at the August Hill Winery tasting room in downstate Utica, where nearly 200 visitors were crowded around the bar on a Saturday afternoon hoping to sample a glass of the house-made Chambourcin paired alongside the Vignoles.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
Passionate golfers, always willing to travel, typically compile so-called bucket lists — their personal catalogs of great clubs around the nation they hope to visit and play someday. The lists even extend internationally, with virtually every low-handicapper dreaming of treading the fairways at St. Andrews and other Scottish courses of legend they’ve seen on TV hosting prestigious tournaments. In southwest suburban Lemont, Cog Hill Golf & Country Club was once a fixture on many bucket lists.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
Many of the technology entrepreneurs who end up making Chicago home for their corporate success have been imbedded here — they either grew up in the metro area and never wanted to leave their families or they went through I.T. programs at such elite schools as Northwestern or the University of Chicago or the University of Illinois and opted to stay after graduation. Chris Gladwin is one outsider who took a different path.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
In the world of Chicago athletics, there may be no event that plants the city so firmly on the international stage as the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. A year ago, the Chicago Marathon logged more than 48,000 finishers, ranking it just behind New York and London as one of the world’s three biggest long-distance venues as measured by volume of participation. Organizer Carey Pinkowski, who carries the title of executive race director, is forecasting that the Chicago Marathon slated for Oct.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
The Federal Reserve’s big half-point interest rate cut announced Sept. 18 now has once-skeptical economists hopeful, and even confident, that the U.S. agency has engineered a soft landing from the sudden bout of inflation that bloomed in the aftermath of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
Hard to believe in this uber-era of video streaming and awards shows everywhere, but when the 22-year-old-graphic designer Michael Kutza staged the inaugural Chicago International Film Festival in 1965, it was the first competitively judged film fest in the United States. From the start it was devoted to foreign films at a time when movie-goers willing to sit through subtitled flicks had few choices in the commercial houses around the Loop.
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Sep 6, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
The U.S. has been at a trade disadvantage with China going back decades, but this summer the imbalance with China has reached new heights with the deficit nearing $100 billion on a monthly basis. American officials have complained about Chinese computer hacking and attempts to corner the solar panel market, but the deficit has not reached front and center in the political debates recently.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
chicagobusiness.com | H. Lee Murphy
The CEO of Starbucks, which has some 630 coffee shops in Illinois, was replaced earlier this month over investor worries that the company wasn’t growing fast enough. In judging the economic health of a city, executives at SumUp, a London-based provider of services to small businesses, will tell you it isn’t Starbucks, but the independent barista pouring java across the street, that really matters.
