Windy city hopes to float on hot air

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 12, 1996 | by Gene Koprowski

In early July, Mayor Richard Daley completed two years of negotiations with the chief executive officers of Chicago-based Fortune 500 companies, including Ameritech and Quaker Oats. He finally convinced them to bestow $9 million in private-sector funds to help finance the imminent Democratic National Convention. The funds, Daley argued, were needed to help rehabilitate Chicago's image as a world-class city, an image badly tarnished the last time the Democrats nominated a presidential candidate here in 1968.

Back then, Vietnam War protesters, led by Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden, provoked riots in the streets outside the International Amphitheater. Richard J. Daley, the current mayor's father, shouted down Sen. Abraham Ribicoff on national television, calling him a "faker" -- or a similar word -- when he tried to nominate George McGovern, not Hubert Humphrey, for president that year. "If we had McGovern, we wouldn't have the gestapo in the streets of Chicago" said Ribicoff, as recounted by columnist Mike Royko in Boss, his landmark book about Chicago politics.

Three decades later, a total of 71 businesses have donated $100,000 each to the city's convention fund -- and another $1 million was raised on July 2 during a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser. The refashioning of the city has begun in earnest.

"It's going to be a party" says B. Thomas Byrne Jr., chairman of the New Jersey Democratic Party. "We're entitled to a love fest once in a while."

But Janet V. Green, former director of White House operations and deputy chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention Committee, or DNCC, tries to put the whole thing in perspective. "Look," she tells Insight, "Chicago is a well-known convention city. In terms of conventions, this one is just the 12th largest on the list. We look at this as a regular travel trip for the president, and a high-profile week for Chicago. But in politics, perception is everything."

City planners have landscaped LaSalle Street in the heart of the downtown financial district and Cicero Avenue near Midway Airport, adding flower boxes to brighten otherwise gritty thoroughfares. The United Center, the sport stadium home to the Chicago Bulls basketball team, is being transelectronic sound stage to present President Clinton to the world. "We're completely transforming the city," says Debra DeLee, chief executive officer of the DNCC.

The Chicago Police Department has conducted millions of dollars in special training for its officers, making sure that they know the essentials of crowd control and do not repeat their performance of 1968. "We want officers to I understand that, yes, they are police and are there to control crowds, but these demonstrators have a legitimate right to be there," says Police Superintendent Charles Roberts, who heads the Training Academy and was himself a patrol officer assigned to the convention in '68. "The American convention process is really designed for demonstrations to show support for various causes and views."

"We're coordinating security with the Chicago Police Department, the Secret Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and even the Coast Guard and private contractors," says Green. Extra security is needed for this convention for another reason as well. "With the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the Secret Service has to be especially vigilant at such a high profile event," notes Ira Lipman, chief executive officer of Guardsmark, an executive security firm.

The 5,000 delegates to the convention aren't the only beneficiaries of these efforts. Some 15,000 journalists from around the world will descend upon the city. A state-of-the-art media pavilion for reporters and television journalists will be outfitted with the latest in electronic gadgetry.

Daley and many business leaders believe these four days in August will affect tourism for years to come. "We view this as more of a Chicago exercise than a political exercise," says Jack Sander, chief executive officer of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world's largest financial-futures exchange. Sander has offered the Merc's trading floor as a site for the California Democratic delegate reception. "If you embrace the idea of Chicago playing host to the convention, you have to embrace the responsibility. It's about showcasing the city."

Bowing to the techno-nerd constituency of the Democratic Party fostered by Vice President Gore, the convention will go on-line. "This will be the first convention at which the power and reach of the World Wide Web will make a significant contribution," says Neal Checkoway, president and chief executive officer of World View, a San Francisco-based company which, along with telephone giant Ameritech, is building a Web site for the delegates.

Another California company, Santa Clara-based Bay Networks Inc., has been named the "Official Local and Wide Area Network Provider" for the convention. The company is implementing an Internet gateway to allow global access to the DNCC home page. "We're working with the Democratic National Convention Committee and the City of Chicago to provide a fully functional network that will support such a large, communications-intensive event," says Dick Eyestone, senior vice president of Bay Networks' Enterprise Business Unit.