Business is Booming in Chicago’s Grant Park
By Jason Woodworth
With the addition of the new skate park, Grant Park is bringing in more money than ever for the city of Chicago.
Located between downtown Chicago and the shore of Lake Michigan, Grant Park is a hotspot within the city. The park is currently undergoing a transformation that will further accommodate tourists and businesses that would like to use the space for festivals and events. Grant Park annually hosts a number of festivals and events. Examples include the Taste of Chicago festival, the Chicago Blues Festival and most notably, Lollapalooza. NBC Chicago reports that Lollapalooza alone has an economic impact of over 100 million dollars in the city of Chicago. The most recent feature added to Grant Park, a state-of-the-art skate park, has proved that it too can be focal point for events and business.
In an interview with Bob O’Neill, President of the Grant Park Conservancy, O’Neill hailed the completion of the skate park as a massive success, calling it “possibly the best urban skate park in the country”. It didn’t take long for the skate park to start bringing business to the city. O’Neill made reference to the Dew Tour; only six months after opening, Grant Park hosted the worlds premiere action sports tour for two days in June.
When asked if business was the only motivation for building the park, O’Neill objected. “We wanted to build the best skate park in the country, and I think we did that. The whole project was developed for skaters, by skaters and nearly the whole thing was crowd-sourced”, said O’Neill. The Grant Park Conservancy has continued to prove their commitment to the new skate park, as O’Neill pointed out that the organization had just recently shipped in new skate-able features for the park from New York.
Nathan Lawrence is a skateboarder who has visited the new skate park many times, travelling from out of state. In one case, Nathan and a few friends came to the park to watch a team of professional skateboarders. When asked about his overall impression of the park Nathan said, “it’s the best park I’ve ever been to, by far. They did a really good job hosting the event too, there were food trucks serving cheap food and we even went to the brand new skate shop around the corner.”
The new skate shop, located at 2 S. State St. isn’t exactly across the street from the Grant Skate Park. Still, it’s no coincidence that a brand new skate shop was opened downtown in conjunction with the new skate park. This is common says Debra Roberts, an employee of the real estate firm Grubb & Ellis. “Businesses are very eager to buy real estate when something new is happening in the parks, whether in Chicago or elsewhere. The new skate park could bring very good business to that area”, said Roberts.
The Grant Skate Park has seen more action in a year than many skate parks see in a lifetime, and Grant Park as a whole continues to attract business to the city of Chicago. As the President of the Grant Park Conservancy Bob O’Neill told me, “The future for Grant Park is very bright”.
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