SOUTH LOOP — The agency building a new DePaul University basketball arena and high-rise hotel next to McCormick Place is looking for a restaurant, too.
The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the quasi-public agency known as McPier, on Wednesday released guidelines for the restaurant it wants to anchor another part of the massive South Loop project: the renovated American Book Company (ABC) Building, 320-330 E. Cermak Road.
The ABC building, a city landmark, will be incorporated into the 39-story, 1206-room Marriott Marquis next to the DePaul arena when it opens next year. McPier had eyed the ABC building for retail and extra conference rooms, but Wednesday's request for bids marks the agency's first formal plans for a restaurant in the development.
According to bidding documents, a restaurateur would be able to fill 10,000 square feet inside the ABC building and perhaps an "outdoor dining area" at the corner of Cermak and Calumet Avenue. Bids are due March 1, and McPier's board is expected to select a tenant in July. The restaurant would pay for its own construction, a project McPier estimates could cost up to $5 million.
The McCormick Place Event Center, as the DePaul arena will be formally called, has been mired in controversy since it was proposed a week before the closing of 49 Chicago public schools in 2013. City officials believe the project will anchor a burgeoning entertainment district they envision around McCormick Place, the nation's largest convention center, but many believe the arena is a misguided priority. The Marriott hotel is being financed, in part, with $55 million in tax-increment financing funds, and the city spent more than $8 million to move a landmarked house for the mega-project, whose total cost McPier pegs at $554 million.
The arena and hotel, already under construction, are expected to open in 2017.
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