June 20, 2022

Project #4 in our Centennial Year Countdown of our Top 100 Projects is the West Expansion to Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center, completed in August of 2007. For this expansion, Epstein was a partner in the Mc4West, LLC, a DesignBuild Joint Venture with Clark Construction, which was awarded in 2003 a $882M contract to design and construct a 2,385,077 square foot addition to the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois. This expansion, with a concept design by tvsDesign and final design by Epstein and its partners, enabled the McCormick Place Convention Center to remain the largest exhibition facility in the United States.

The West Expansion is bordered by Martin Luther King Drive to the east, the Stevenson Expressway to the south, Cermak Road to the north and Indiana Avenue to the west. The West Expansion includes approximately 459,000 square feet of exhibition space, 140,750 square feet of meeting/banquet space, a 103,750 square foot ballroom, as well as associated food and support service spaces. The addition required connecting the existing McCormick Place complex with pedestrian and vehicular bridges and modifying an existing parking garage and conference center. The new facility also necessitated designing an elevated service roadway between the existing truck marshalling facility at the South Hall and exhibition center.

Epstein served as Architect and Engineer of Record, and also provided architectural design services along with structural, civil and MEP engineering services. Epstein was also the Project Manager for the completion of design and construction documents and managed a design team comprised of over 25 consultants. In addition to Epstein’s architectural and engineering role, we provided interior design and environmental graphics for this expansion.

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