Company Perspectives:
BJ's Brewery and BJ's Brewhouse serve markedly superior food and fresh, handcrafted beers in a casual, lively atmosphere. Our employees and experience exude a warm, friendly and energetic spirit that serves to convey a sense of honest value and a commitment to totally exceed the expectations of our guests. To assure the delight and continued loyalty of the guest, we are fanatical about each and every detail: from the use of only quality ingredients and preparation of our product and the well-trained, enthusiastic spirit of our employees to clean premises, a colorful presentation of our image and our on-going community involvement, the BJ's Brand strives to make our guests say "Wow!, I love this place!"
History of Chicago Pizza & Brewery, Inc.
Chicago Pizza & Brewery, Inc. operates a chain of restaurants which are run under various names: BJ's Pizza & Grill, BJ's Restaurant & Brewery, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, and Pietro's Pizza. Chicago Pizza & Brewery Inc. has grown steadily during the 1990s, and in 2001 it included 30 restaurants in all in five western states, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. The company expects to continue its expansion and to move into Arizona as well. Chicago Pizza & Brewery restaurants have menus which offer a variety of items, including salads, burgers, pasta, sandwiches, and entrees, but the chain is best-known for its Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. The company also operates microbreweries in six of its restaurants. Those breweries supply the entire chain with a full line of regular and seasonal beers. Beer sales account for about 25 percent of Chicago Pizza & Brewery sales.
Amateur Pizzerias
The history of Chicago Pizza & Brewery is in large part the story of the attractiveness of the restaurant business to outsiders. It began in 1976 when two residents of Ohio, Bill Cunningham, a partner in a brokerage firm, and Michael Phillips, the marketing director for an appliance company, decided to strike out and go into business for themselves. Rather than selecting a business they knew, however, they decided to try their luck in restaurants. Neither partner had any experience whatsoever in running a restaurant; the deciding factor was that because there would be no accounts receivable or inventory to worry about, the bookkeeping would be simpler. Cunningham and Phillips quit their jobs and moved their families across the country to California where they purchased a Burger King franchise in San Pedro. They were attracted to Burger King primarily by the detailed training the company offered its franchisees. That training provided the basis for the success of their own chain of restaurants. While with Burger King, Phillips and Cunningham hoped eventually to purchase more franchises. They were forced to reconsider that plan, however, when Burger King adopted a new policy that prevented franchisees from owning stores themselves. Instead the partners turned to pizza.
Phillips and Cunningham had no experience in pizza either. They knew what they liked, though, and in their minds, there was a lot of room for improvement in California pizza restaurants. "We didn't think they were very people-oriented," Cunningham once told the Orange County Register. "It was: Get in line, order your pizza, put a number on your table. Kids screaming, peanuts on the floor." They made up their minds that pizza could be served just as well in a real restaurant, with wait people and a nice décor. So, in 1978, they founded a company called Roman Systems Inc. and opened the first BJ's Chicago Pizzerias. The first restaurant was located in Santa Ana, California, followed shortly by one in Newport Beach, California. The concept was simple and it worked: traditional Chicago pan pizza, for under $5 per person, served by waiters and waitresses in an attractive restaurant setting rather than amid benches, spilled beer, and sawdust. Through the 1980s, BJ's business increased by about ten percent a year, even during periods of economic recession. When the economy was hit by another recession in the early 1990s, however, even an inexpensive, full service restaurant like BJ's found it was only just holding on--not losing money, but not growing either. The pizza garnered a solid reputation too. By 1991, BJ's had won just about every "Best Pizza" award given in the Los Angeles area.
New Careers in Pizza
By 1991, BJ's had six restaurants, all earning over $1 million annually--about twice the pizza industry average. Cunningham and Phillips began getting inquiries from outsiders interested in opening BJ's franchises. Growth seemed to be in BJ's future and the partners were looking at the addition of 15 new stores in the first half of the 1990s. One of their basic principles was to go slow with growth philosophy until they had adequate experienced staff in place for new openings. By the early 1990s, Cunningham and Phillips were also growing tired of running the business on a day-to-day basis. They were ready to step back and start to enjoy what they had built up. One day the BJ's owners asked their accountants, Paul Motenko and Jerry Hennessey, how to scale back their involvement in the company. Motenko and Hennessey hardly hesitated. They would be willing to take over the management of BJ's. Although they had no experience as restaurateurs, they closed their CPA firm and launched new careers in pizza.
One of Motenko and Hennessey's first decisions was to begin an aggressive expansion of the BJ's chain. They opened a site in Long Beach in 1992, put a second location in La Jolla in 1993, and launched restaurants in Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, and Lahaina, Maui, in 1994. The quick expansion led to losses: in 1994, the company a suffered a $523,000 loss against revenues of $6.5 million, and in 1995 a loss of $1 million against revenues of $6.6 million. Nonetheless, 1995 Motenko and Hennessey were willing to purchase the business outright for about $4 million and stock in the firm, which had been newly incorporated.
Once they owned the firm, Hennessey and Motenko set to work revamping it. Consultants were hired to design a new logo and to create a consistent concept for a chain of restaurants. The results were first incorporated into a restaurant the firm opened in Brea, California, in April 1996. With 10,000 square-feet in floor space, the Brea restaurant was nearly five times larger than most then-existing BJ's. It was also the first store in the chain with a microbrewery. It offered a much larger selection of food, adding pasta, salads, burgers, and sandwiches, and a greatly expanded pizza menu. The Brea restaurant was acquired and running in a remarkably short period of time. The building was first acquired on March 15 and the restaurant was opened on April 1, only two weeks later--after the installation of completely new fixtures, a full renovation, and the hiring and training of 135 new employees.
The opening was not free of problems, however, and the owners spent the next two months getting the restaurant's service up to speed. But once the Brea restaurant got on track, it became the flagship store of the BJ's chain. An important part of the new concept was the adoption of a new name for the restaurants: BJ's Pizza & Grill. New stores continued to be opened through the rest of the decade. By October 1996, the BJ's chain was ten stores large, with locations in four states, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. The growth got an important boost in March 1996 with the purchase of the Pietro's Corp., the owner of a chain of pizza restaurants in the states of Washington and Oregon.
Pietro's was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time and Motenko and Hennessey were able to acquire it for $2.35 million and the assumption of about $500,000 in debt. Four Pietro's restaurants were converted to BJ's format; some others were shut down; in 2000, six were still operating under the old Pietro's name. When Pietro's was acquired, Motenko and Hennessey anticipated that Pietro's might add as much as $11 million in annual sales to their coffers.
Pizza IPO in the Mid-1990s
In the first quarter of 1996, BJ's lost about $367,000 against sales--which had increased by 12 percent--of $1.8 million. Despite the losses, which the owners attributed to the opening of the new restaurants, in October of that year, the firm, under the name of a newly-formed holding company, Chicago Pizza & Brewery Inc., took another major step. It made an initial public offering of company stock, selling 1.8 million shares for $5 a piece. Of the approximately $9 million that the IPO raised for Chicago Pizza & Brewery, nearly $7 million was to go toward the renovation of newly-acquired restaurants and another $1.6 million was to be used for debt reduction. The IPO had one completely unexpected consequence for the firm. Chicago Pizza had floated its offering with a relatively unknown underwriter, the Boston Group of Los Angeles. Not long afterwards, the Boston Group went out of business. From one day to the next, Motenko later said, Chicago Pizza seemed to lose all market support and its shares plunged from their $5 opening price to around $1 where they would hover for much of the next five years.
Despite such unfortunate occurrences, the company had found an effective formula. By the mid-1990s, BJ's was attracting a diverse clientele. The restaurants with their generous portions and low prices drew families, students, and seniors, while the exciting atmosphere of the bars in BJ's drew crowds of singles and young professionals. In March 1997, Chicago Pizza & Brewery announced the opening of its first restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. The site included a restaurant with more than 150 seats and a brewery with a capacity of ten barrels. As 1997 ended, the company boasted 27 restaurants with annual sales of $26 million. In November 1998 the firm announced it would open three more restaurants in the Los Angeles area.
Late 1990s: Outside Interest in Chicago Pizza
In December 1998, La Pizza Loca Inc., one of the largest Latino-owned businesses in California's Orange County, approached Chicago Pizza & Brewery and offered to buy out the company. Pizza Loca's chief executive, Alex Meruelo, who already held a 7.4 percent stake in Chicago Pizza & Brewery offered to purchase it for $2 per share, nearly 50 cents above the then-prevailing market price, an offer worth approximately $12.8 million in all. Under the terms of Meruelo's offer, La Pizza Loca would purchase all Chicago Pizza shares except those held personally by Motenko and Hennessey. Those shares would be exchanged for shares in the newly-combined Pizza Loca-Chicago Pizza. Meruelo said he was pursuing the deal because he believed there were strong synergies between the two firms. The owners of Chicago Pizza rejected the offer, however, saying they felt it did not serve the best interests of the company's shareholders.
A little more than two months later, Chicago Pizza & Brewery announced that it was selling 1.25 million shares of its common stock to ASSI Inc., a real estate and hospitality company that had provided funds for the acquisition of the Pietro's chain in 1996. In exchange for the stock, ASSI was to pay Chicago Pizza $1 million and cancel two consulting agreements it had with the company, as well as canceling 3.2 million of Chicago Pizza's outstanding warrants which it held. Those warrants--a kind of stock option certificate which allowed the holder, for a predetermined period of time, to purchase a share of stock at a predetermined price--made up approximately 25 percent of all Chicago Pizza's outstanding warrants. Many saw the deal as linked directly to the retirement of those warrants, which were seen to be depressing the value of Chicago Pizza's stock. Another incentive for Chicago Pizza, however, was the promise of ASSI's real estate expertise as it pursued further expansion. Alex Meruelo, whose La Pizza Loca offer to take over the BJ's chain had been rebuffed in December, immediately filed suit against Chicago Pizza in civil court, alleging that in accepting approximately 80 cents per share from ASSI instead of the $2.00 per share Pizza Loca had offered, Chicago Pizza had acted irresponsibly toward the interests of its stockholders. In March 1999, a California court refused Meruelo's request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the transfer of stock to ASSI. The deal was consummated later in March.
Chicago Pizza earned its first profit under Motenko and Hennessey in 1998, when it reported earnings of $85,000, up from a loss of $315,000 in 1997. The company had 1998 revenues of $30.1 million, up 15 percent from the previous year. In mid-1999 the company announced an executive restructuring with the naming of Ernie Klinger as president. Jerry Hennessey gave up the position and became co-CEO with Paul Motenko. Chicago Pizza denied that the restructuring had anything to do with an attempt by Alex Mereulo, the holder by then of nearly 15 percent of the company's stock, to win a seat on the board of directors.
The year 1999 saw Chicago Pizza's annual sales jump to $37.4 million and same store sales at BJ's restaurants increase by 7.8 percent. In 1999, it also opened new restaurants in Arcadia, Woodland Hills, and La Mesa, California, and planned several other new sites in the coming months. As 2000 began, the company was operating 19 BJ's and eight Pietro's. In spring 2000, Chicago Pizza opened a new restaurant in West Covina, California, which had 12,000 square feet in area as well as the chain's largest microbrewery.
The ownership of Chicago Pizza underwent another change in December 2000, when the Jacmar Cos., one of Chicago Pizza's major restaurant suppliers, agreed to purchase approximately 2.9 million shares of the company's stock. Jacmar had a newly-formed affiliate called BJ Chicago, which had earlier in the year acquired more than 15 percent of Chicago Pizza common stock in open trading. BJ Chicago bought another 2.2 million shares at $4 each from ASSI Inc. and Louis Habash, and co-CEO's Motenko and Hennessey agreed to sell 661,358 of their own shares, about half of their personal holdings, as well. In all, the deal gave Jacmar a 51 percent holding in Chicago Pizza and control of the firm.
Chicago Pizza officials later admitted that debt financing had forced them to make the deal. The Union Bank would only agree to $8 million in loan financing to Chicago Pizza only if the company were able to come up with additional equity. Chicago Pizza & Brewery called 2000 the best year in its history. Four new restaurants were opened in California. It marked the fifth consecutive year of same-store sales increases. Company revenues increased by 40 percent over 1999, reaching $52.35 million.
Principal Divisions: Pietro's Restaurants; BJ's Pizza & Grill; BJ's Restaurant & Brewery; BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse.
Principal Competitors: T.G.I. Friday's; Chili's Grill & Bar; Claim Jumper; The Cheesecake Factory; California Pizza Kitchen; Pizzeria Uno; Chicago Bar and Grill.
Related information about Chicago
41°53N 87°38W, pop (2000e) 2 896 000. Third
largest city in the USA; seat of Cook Co, NE Illinois, on L
Michigan; built on the site of Fort Dearborn; settled in the 1830s;
city status, 1837; developed as a result of its strategic position
linking the Great Lakes with the Mississippi R after the Illinois
and Michigan Canal was completed (1848), and after the railway to
the E was opened (1853); much of the city destroyed by fire, 1871;
notorious gangster activity in the Prohibition years (1920s),
notably by Al Capone; now the major industrial, commercial,
financial and cultural centre for the US interior; electrical
machinery, metal products, steel (one-quarter of the nation's steel
produced in and around the city), textiles, chemicals, food
products, printing and publishing; commerce and finance centred
upon ‘The Loop’ area; transport centre of the USA, with one of the
busiest airports in the world; major rail network and inland port;
seven universities; Sears Tower (1974), the world's second tallest
building in 1999 (443 m/1454 ft); professional teams,
Cubs, White Sox (baseball), Bulls (basketball), Bears (football),
Black Hawks (ice hockey); Lyric Opera, Art Institute, Museum of
Science and Industry, Shedd Aquarium, Planetarium; Chicago Film
Festival (Nov).
) is the largest city in
the U.S. state of
Illinois, as well as
the third-most populous city in the United States,
with nearly 2.9 million people. Located along the southwestern
shore of Lake
Michigan, it is the seat of Cook County.
Chicago is known as the "Second City," the "Windy City," the "City of Big Shoulders", and
"Chi-town". When combined with its suburbs and nine surrounding counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana, the greater metropolitan area
known as Chicagoland
encompasses a population greater than 9.4 million, making it the
third largest in the United States.
Since its 1833 founding as a frontier town of the Old Northwest, Chicago has grown into one of the
ten most influential world cities.The World According to GaWC (2006).
Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network.
Chicago today is the financial, economic, and cultural capital of
the Midwest, and is recognized as a major transportation,
business, and architectural center.
Origin of name
The indigenous Potawatomi tribe called the marshes on which Chicago was later built "Checagou
(prounounced 'She-Ka-Gan')," which translates to "wild onion" or
"garlic." Before Chicago's founding, the name of the river was
spelled several ways, such as "Chetagu" or "Shikago."
The origin of Chicago's nickname as "The Windy City" is debated
(see List of nicknames for Chicago). The most common
explanation had been that the phrase was created by New York
newspapers in the 1880s during a national debate over which city
would host the 1893 World's Fair, making reference to the long-windedness of
the city's supporters.
History
During the mid-1700s, the Chicago area was inhabited primarily
by Potawatomis, who
took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people. In 1803, the United States Army
built Fort
Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Fort Dearborn
Massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the
United States in the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was
organized with a population of 350, and within seven years it grew
to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated
on March 4, 1837.
Starting in 1848, the city became an important transportation link
between the eastern and western United States with the opening of
the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, Chicago's first
railway, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which allowed
shipping from the Great Lakes through Chicago to the Mississippi River.
With a flourishing economy that brought many new residents from
rural communities and immigrants from Europe, Chicago grew from a city of 299,000 to
nearly 1.7 million between 1870 and 1900. The city's manufacturing
and retail sectors dominated the Midwest and greatly influenced the
American economy, with the Union Stock Yards' dominating the packing
trade.
After the Great
Chicago Fire of 1871, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and
growth.Bruegmann, Robert (2004-2005). Built Environment of the
Chicago Region. Encyclopedia of Chicago (online
version). During Chicago's rebuilding period, the first
skyscraper was
constructed in 1885 using steel-skeleton construction. In 1893, Chicago hosted the
World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the
present location of Jackson Park. The term "midway" for a fair or
carnival referred originally to the Midway, a strip of park land
that still runs through the University of Chicago campus.
The city was the site of labor conflicts and unrest during this
period, which included the Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886.
Concern for social problems among Chicago's lower classes led to
the founding of Hull
House in 1889, of which Jane Addams was a co-founder. The city also invested in
many large, finely-landscaped municipal parks, which also included
public sanitation facilities.
Lake Michigan -
the primary source of fresh water for the city - was already highly
polluted from population growth and the rapidly growing industries
in and around Chicago. The city responded by embarking on several
large public works
projects, including a large excavation project which built tunnels
below Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs which were two miles (3 km) off
the lakeshore. Beginning in 1855, Chicago constructed the first
comprehensive sewer system in the U.S. In 1900, the problem of
sewage was solved by reversing the direction of the River's flow
with the construction of the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River.
The 1920s brought international notoriety to Chicago as gangsters
such as Al Capone
battled each other and the law during the Prohibition era.
Nevertheless, the 1920s also saw a large increase in Chicago
industry as well as the first arrivals of the Great
Migration that would lead thousands of mostly Southern blacks
to Chicago and other Northern cities. On December 2, 1942, the world's first controlled
nuclear
reaction was conducted at the University of
Chicago as part of the top secret Manhattan
Project.
Mayor Richard J.
Nevertheless, the city hosted the 1968
Democratic National Convention and saw the construction of the
Sears Tower (which
became the world's tallest building), McCormick Place, and
O'Hare Airport.
In 1983 Harold
Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of
mayor; As a part of its environmentally friendly image, Chicago
declared Peregrine
Falcon, a protected species that started to build its nests in
Chicago skyscrapers, the official bird of the city in 1999.Peregrine Falcon:
Official City Bird of Chicago.
Geography and climate
Located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of
Lake Michigan,
Chicago's official geographic coordinates are . It sits on the
continental
divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, connecting the Mississippi River and
the Great Lakes
watersheds. The
city lies beside Lake Michigan and two rivers: the Chicago River in
downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side flow
entirely or partially through Chicago. The Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the
Des Plaines
River, which runs to the west of the city.
When Chicago was founded in the 1830s, most of the early building
began around the mouth of the Chicago River. According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, Chicago has a total area of 234.0 square miles
(606.1 km²), of which 227.1 square miles (588.3 km²) is
land and 6.9 square miles (17.8 km²) is water.
Since the first recorded earthquake in 1804,200th Anniversary of the First
Recorded Chicago Earthquake (9/14/2004). More recently, an
earthquake with an epicenter in Ottawa, Illinois,
registering about 4.3 on the Richter scale shook some buildings in Chicago on
June 28,
2004.
Climate
Chicago, like much of the Midwest, has a climate that is prone to extreme, often
volatile, weather conditions. Weatherbase. According to the
National
Weather Service, Chicago's highest official temperature reading
of 105 °F (40 °C) was recorded on July 24, 1934. The lowest temperature of −27 °F
(−32 °C) degrees was recorded on January 20, 1985.
Chicago's yearly precipitation averages about 38 inches (965 mm). Chicago's highest one
day precipitation total was 6.49 inches (164 mm) which fell on
August 14, 1987.
Cityscape
[[Image:DowntownChicagoILatNight.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Downtown
Chicago along the
Chicago River looking northeast]]
The city?s urban context is organized within a grid pattern. The Northwest
and Southwest sides of the city area also referenced with
frequency, though they tend to be subsumed under one of the three
aforementioned areas.
Since the first steel-framed high-rise building of the world was
constructed in the city in 1885, Chicago has been known for the
skyscraper.Chicago (2004).
Chicago Public Library. Today, many high-rise buildings are
located in the downtown area, notably in the Loop and along the
lakefront and the Chicago River. The three tallest buildings are
the Sears Tower
(also the tallest building in North America), the Aon Center, and
the John Hancock
Center. There are clusters of industrialized areas, including the lakefront near the
Indiana border, the area
south of Midway
Airport, and the banks of the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal.
Future building sites that will contribute to Chicago's skyline
include Waterview
Tower, 400 North Lake Shore Drive, and the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Along Lake Shore
Drive, parks line the lakefront. The most notable of these
parks are Grant Park and Millennium Park, which border the east end of the Loop,
Lincoln Park on the north side, and Jackson Park
in the Hyde
Park neighborhood on the south side. Interspersed within this
system of parks are 31 beaches, a zoo and several bird sanctuaries, McCormick Place
Convention Center, Navy
Pier, Soldier
Field, the Museum Campus, and a water treatment plant.
Pushed along by the national real estate boom in recent years,
Chicago has seen an unprecedented surge in skyscraper construction,
most notably in the area directly south (South Loop)
and north (River North) of the Loop. However, these homes (and
others throughout Chicago) have been all but demolished in
Chicago's recent movement to replace public housing with
mixed-income, progressive new housing developments, known as the
Plan for Transformation (see The Chicago Housing
Authority).
Regardless of this, many areas of the South Side, despite
perceptions to the otherwise, are stable, middle-class, and
diverse. U.S. Bureau of the Census (accessed April 20,
2006).
As one of the largest cities in North America, the population of
Chicago is cosmopolitan. This encompasses about one-fifth of the
entire population of the state of Illinois and 1% of the population of the United States. The
population
density was 12,750.3 people per square mile (4,923.0/km²). The racial makeup of
the city was 36.39% Black
or African American, 31.32% White, 26.02%
Hispanic or
Latino,
4.33% Asian and
Pacific Islander, 1.64% from two or more races, 0.15%
Native American, and 0.15% from other
races.Chicago Demographics
(2003). US Census Bureau The city itself makes up 23.3%
percent of the total population of Illinois, down from a high of
44.3% in 1930.
Like most large American cities, Chicago is a minority-majority city.
Of the 1,061,928 households, 28.9% have children under the age of
18 living with them, 35.1% were married couples living together, 18.9% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 40.4% were non-families.
Of the total population, 28.1% of those under the age of 18 and
15.5% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
Chicago has a large Irish-American population on its South Side. The
majority of African Americans are also located on Chicago's South Side. Other European ethnic groups are the
Germans,
Italians and
Polish. Chicago
has the largest population of Swedish-Americans of any city in the U.S. with
approximately 123,000. After the Great Chicago Fire,
many Swedish carpenters helped to rebuild the city, which led to
the saying the Swedes built Chicago.Chicago Stories - Swedes in Chicago
(2006). Chicago is the home of the Evangelical
Covenant Church www.covchurch.org..
Chicago has the largest Bulgarian community in the world (outside Bulgaria) with more than
150,000 Bulgarians living in the city. The city has the largest
ethnically Polish
population outside of Poland, making it one of the most important Polonia centers.America the diverse -
Chicago's Polish neighborhoods (5/15/2005). USA Weekend
Magazine. Chicago is also the second-largest SerbianSerbian Delegation
(4/30/2004). WTCC Weekly News at www.wtcc.org. and
Lithuanian
city,Cities Guide Chicago -
A hard-knock life (2006). Economist.com. and the third
largest Greek city in the
world.Chicago Stories - The Greeks
in Chicago (2006). Accessed June 5, 2006. Chicago has a large
Romanian-American community with more than
100,000,About Us. The city is home
to the seat of the head of the Assyrian Church
of the East, Mar
Dinkha IV, the Evangelical Covenant Church www.covchurch.org.,
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
headquarters.Contact Us.
ELCA.org.
The Chicago Metropolitan area is also a major center for Indian-Americans and
South Asians.
Chicago has the third-largest South Asian population in the United
States, after New York
City and the San Francisco Bay Area. The Devon Avenue
corridor on Chicago's north side is one of the largest South Asian
neighborhoods in North
America. Chicago also has the second-largest Puerto Rican
population in the United States after New York City.
Population
Chicago's 2006 population of estimate of 2,873,790 is debated by
some since there has been signifcant construction in the city in
the 6 years since the 2000 census.
Over 1/3 of the population of Chicago is concentrated in the
lakefront neighborhoods of the city (from Rogers Park in
the north to Hyde Park in the south). This makes Chicago's lakefront
the most densely populated area in the United States outside of
New York City.
www.demographia.com/db-chi-nhd2000.htm
Economy
Chicago has the third largest gross
metropolitan product in the nation - approximately $390 billion. The
city has also been rated as having the most balanced economy in the
United States due to its high level of
diversification.www.worldbusinesschicago.com/
about/upload/20ChicagoSunTimes6-23-03.pdf Moody's: Chicago's
Economy Most Balanced in US (1/23/2003). Accessed 08/22/2006 from
'Site Selection Online' at
www.siteselection.com/issues/2006/mar/p176/.
Chicago is a major financial center with the second largest central business
district in the U.S. The city is the headquarters of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of
the Federal Reserve). The city is also home to four major financial
and futures exchanges, including the Chicago Stock
Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the Chicago Board
Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange (the "Merc"). Chicago and the surrounding
areas also house many major brokerage firms and insurance
companies, such as Allstate Corporation and Zurich North America. Accessed
from 'SAGE Publications' at edq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/1/10?ijkey=50c44cb29d68315499a2aa3771131b328064bf28&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha.
Manufacturing (which includes chemicals, metal, machinery, and
consumer electronics), printing and publishing, and food processing
also play major roles in the city's economy. Encyclopedia of
Chicago (online edition). Several medical products and services
companies are headquartered in the Chicago area, including Baxter
International, Abbott Laboratories, and the Healthcare Financial
Services division of General Electric. Moreover, the construction of the
Illinois
and Michigan Canal, which helped move goods from the Great Lakes south on the
Mississippi
River, and the railroads in the 1800s made the city a major
transportation center in the United States. In the 1840s, Chicago
became a major grain
port, and in the 1850s and 1860s Chicago's pork and beef industry
expanded. Chicago is third in the U.S. behind Las Vegas and
Orlando as
far as the number of conventions hosted annually.Chicago falls to 3rd in U.S.
convention industry (4/26/2006). Crain's Chicago
Business. In addition, Chicago is home to eleven Fortune 500 companies, while
the metropolitan area hosts an additional 21 Fortune 500
companies.Fortune 500 2006 -
Illinois. CBRE - CB Richard Ellis, at
www.cbre.com/NR/rdonlyres/9326419A-60CC-47BC-9960-448BD4B32C52/0/MarketOutlook06FINAL.pdf.
In 2006, Chicago placed 10th on the UBS list of the world's richest
cities.
Law and government
Chicago is the county
seat of Cook County. The government of the City of Chicago is
divided into executive and legislative branches. The Mayor of Chicago is the
chief
executive, elected by general election for a term of four
years. In addition to the mayor, Chicago's two other citywide
elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer.
The City
Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50
alderman, one elected from each ward in the city.
The council takes official action through the passage of ordinances
and resolutions.
During much of the last half of the 19th century, Chicago's
politics were dominated by a growing Democratic Party organization dominated by ethnic
ward-healers. During the 1880s and 1890s, Chicago had a powerful
radical tradition with large and highly organized socialist,
anarchist and labor organizations. For much of the 20th century,
Chicago has been among the largest and most reliable Democratic
strongholds in the United States, with Chicago's Democratic vote
totals' leading the state of Illinois to be "solid
blue" in presidential elections since 1992. The citizens of
Chicago have not elected a Republican mayor since 1927, when William Thompson
was voted into office. The strength of the party in the city is
partly a consequence of Illinois state politics, where the Republicans have come
to represent the rural and farm concerns while the Democrats
support urban issues such as Chicago's public school funding.
Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's mastery of machine politics
preserved the Chicago Democratic Machine long after the demise of
similar machines in other large American cities. During much of
that time the city administration found opposition mainly from a
liberal "independent" faction of the Democratic Party. Chicago
Tribune, found at
qrc.depaul.edu/djabon/Articles/ChicagoCrime20030101.htm. After
adopting crime-fighting techniques recommended by the New York Police
Department and the Los Angeles
Police Department in 2004,David Heinzmann and Rex W. City murder toll lowest
in decades Chicago Tribune. Chicago recorded 448
homicides, the lowest total since 1965. They have prompted some
calls of discrimination since these cameras tend to be prevalent in
Black and Latino communities with higher than average crime
rates.
The FBI often does not accept crime statistics submitted by the
Chicago
Police Department, which tallies data differently than other
cities. As a result, Chicago is often omitted from studies like
Morgan Quitno's
annual "Safest/Most Dangerous City" survey.Locy, Toni (6/7/2005).
USA Today.
Education
Public education
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the school district that
controls over 600 public elementary and high schools in Chicago.
Chicago Public Schools at www.cps.k12.il.us/AtAGlance.html.
is led by CEO Arne Duncan. The CPS also
includes several selective-admission magnet schools, such as
Whitney Young Magnet High School, William
Jones College Preparatory, Walter Payton
College Prep, Lane
Tech College Prep, and Northside College Preparatory High School.
Like many urban U.S. school districts, CPS suffered many problems
throughout the latter half of the 20th century, including
overcrowding, underfunding, mismanagement and a high dropout rate.
In 1987, then U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett named
the Chicago Public Schools as the "worst in the nation." Several
school reform
initiatives have since been undertaken to improve the system's
performance. Reforms have included a system of Local School
Councils, Charter
Schools, and efforts to end social promotion. The city is home to two of
America's top research universities: University of
Chicago in Hyde Park on the South Side and Northwestern
University in northside suburb Evanston. Several
private Catholic universities are located in Chicago, such as
DePaul
University (the largest private university in Illinois),
St. Xavier
University, and Loyola University.
The University of Illinois at Chicago is the city's largest
university and features the nation's largest medical school. The
Illinois Institute of Technology in Bronzeville has
renowned engineering and architecture programs. Dominican
University, outside Chicago in River Forest, teaches many
library courses at the Chicago Public Library's Harold Washington
Building. North Park University, a small Christian liberal arts
university affiliated with the Evangelical
Covenant Church, is located on the northwest side in the North
Park neighborhood. These accredited seminaries are joined in a
consortium known as the Association of Chicago Theological Schools
(ACTS).Association of Chicago Theological
Schools The Moody Bible Institute is near downtown. Chicago State
University and Northeastern Illinois University are other state
universities in Chicago. The city also has a large community college
system known as the City Colleges of Chicago. Additionally, there are
several smaller colleges noted for their fine arts education programs -
Roosevelt
University, Columbia College Chicago, and The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Culture
Chicago has a major theater scene, and is the birthplace of modern improvisational
comedy. The city is home to two renowned comedy troupes:
The Second City
and Steppenwolf
Theatre Company (on the city's north side), the Goodman Theatre, and the
Victory Gardens Theater. Other theatres, from nearly 100 storefront
performance spaces such as the Strawdog Theatre Company in the
Lakeview
area to landmark downtown houses such as the Chicago Theatre, present
a variety of plays and
musicals. The
city is home to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, the Joffrey Ballet, and several modern and jazz dance
troupes. The city's classical music scene is also home to companies
including Music
of the Baroque, Chicago Opera Theater, the Chicago Chamber
Musicians, Chicago a cappella, and many others.
Chicago is known for its Chicago blues, Chicago soul, Jazz, and Gospel. The city is the birthplace of the House style of music, and
is the site of an influential Hip-Hop scene.
In the 1980s the city was a center for industrial, punk and new wave (spawning
the famous Wax Trax!
label); There is a flourishing independent rock scene, including
the recent explosion of Chicago emo acts, with multiple festivals featuring various acts
each year (Lollapalooza, the Intonation Music
Festival and Pitchfork Music Festival being the most
prominent).
Chicago has several signature foods which reflect the city's ethnic
and working-class
roots. These include the deep-dish pizza and the Chicago hot dog,
which is almost always made of Vienna Beef and loaded with mustard, chopped onion,
sliced tomato, pickle relish, celery salt, sport peppers, and a
dill pickle spear. Chicago is also known for Italian Beef sandwiches and
the Maxwell
Street Polish (always served topped with grilled onions and
mustard).
Sites of interest
In 1998, the city officially opened the Museum Campus, a
10-acre (4-hectare) lakefront park
surrounding three of the city's main museums: the Adler Planetarium, the
Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium. Grant
Park is also home to Chicago's other major downtown museum, the
Art
Institute of Chicago, which is partnered with The School of the
Art Institute of Chicago. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, located in
the Hyde
Park neighborhood, is housed in the only in-place surviving
building from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Navy Pier, a
3000-foot (900 m) pier housing restaurants, shops, museums,
exhibition halls, auditoriums, and a 150-foot-tall (45 m) Ferris wheel, is located
north of Grant Park on the lakefront.
The Chicago
Cultural Center, built in 1897 as Chicago's first permanent
public library,
now houses the city's Visitor Information Center, galleries, and
exhibit halls. The Oriental Institute, part of the University of
Chicago, has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian and
Near Eastern
archaeological artifacts, while the Freedom
Museum is dedicated to exploring and explaining the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Other
museums and galleries in Chicago are the Chicago History
Museum, DuSable
Museum of African-American History, Mexican Fine
Arts Center Museum, Museum
of Contemporary Art, and the Peggy
Notebaert Nature Museum.
Millennium Park
is a rebuilt section of Grant Park that was planned for unveiling
at the turn of the 21st century, though it was delayed for several
years.
Media
Chicago is the third-largest market in the U.S. (after New York City and Los Angeles).Nielsen Media - DMA Listing (September 24,
2005). All of the major American television networks have subsidiaries in
Chicago. WGN-TV, which is
owned by the Tribune
Company, is carried (with some programming differences) as
"Superstation WGN"
on cable
nation-wide. The city is also the home of the Oprah Winfrey Show,
while Chicago
Public Radio produces programs such as PRI's
This American
Life and NPR's Wait Wait...
Other television news programs include ABC 7, NBC 5, CBS 2, FOX 32,
WGN 9, and CLTV
There are two major daily newspapers published in Chicago: the Chicago Tribune and the
Chicago
Sun-Times, with the former having the larger circulation.
The Chicago Cubs of
the National
League play at Wrigley Field, which is located in the North Side
neighborhood of Lakeview, commonly referred to as "Wrigleyville." The
Chicago White
Sox of the American League play at U.S. Cellular Field,
in the city's South Side Bridgeport neighborhood.
The Chicago Bulls
of the National Basketball Association is one of the world's
most recognized basketball teams. The Bulls play at the United Center on Chicago's
Near West side. The Chicago Bears of the National Football
League play at Soldier Field. The Chicago Fire,
members of Major
League Soccer, won one league and three US Open Cups since 1997.
Other major league sports teams in Chicago include the Chicago Blackhawks of
the National
Hockey League and the Chicago Sky of the Women's National Basketball Association
The city has offered an official Olympic bid for
the 2016 Summer
Olympics, and is considered a strong contender among the three
candidate American cities.Kathy Bergen and Gary Washburn
(5/11/2006). Chicago Tribune. Chicago also hosted the
1959 Pan
American Games, and Gay Games VII in 2006.
Infrastructure
Health and medicine
Chicago is home to the Illinois Medical
District on the Near West Side. It includes Rush
University Medical Center, the University of Illinois at Chicago medical center, and
John H.
The University of Chicago operates the University
of Chicago Hospitals, which was ranked the fourteenth best
hospital in the country
by U.S. News and World Report. It is the only hospital
in Illinois ever to be
included in the magazine's "Honor Roll" of the best hospitals in
the United
States.
The University of Illinois College of Medicine at
UIC is the largest medical school in the United States
(1300 students, including those at campuses in Peoria, Rockford and
Urbana-Champaign).About the College - A Brief History of the
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine (2005).
UIC College of Medicine at
www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/history.shtml. Chicago is also home to other
nationally recognized medical schools including Rush Medical
College, the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of
Chicago, and the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern
University. In addition, the Chicago Medical
School and Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine
are located in the suburbs of North Chicago
and Maywood,
respectively. The Midwestern University Chicago College of Osteopathic
Medicine is in Downers Grove.
The leading healthcare informatics organizations are located in
Chicago, including the American Medical Informatics Association and
the Health Information Management Systems Society. These
organizations include as members many healthcare IT vendors and
the CIO/VP Technology leaders of most American healthcare
operations. The American College of Surgeons, American Dental
Association, American Hospital Association, American
Medical Association, and the American
Osteopathic Association are based in the city. It is an
important component in global distribution, as it is the third
largest inter-modal port in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.
Madigan, p.52. Additionally, it is the only city in North America
in which all six Class I railroads meet.Appendix C: Regional
Freight Transportation Profiles. U.S. Department of
Transportation - Federal Highway Administration (April 2005).
Seven interstate
highways run through Chicago. Other named highway segments are
the Stevenson Expressway (I-55) and Eisenhower Expressway (I-290).
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) handles public
transportation in Chicago and a few adjacent suburbs. The CTA
operates an extensive network of buses and a rapid transit system known
locally as the 'L' (for "elevated"), which among other things provides
rail service from downtown to Midway and O'Hare airports. The
Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) provides service
in forty surrounding suburbs with some extensions into the
city.
Metra operates commuter
rail service in Chicago and its suburbs. The Metra Electric Line
shares the railway with the South Shore Line's NICTD
Northwest Indiana Commuter Rail Service, which accesses Gary/Chicago Airport. Pace operates a
primarily-suburban bus service that also offers some routes into
Chicago.
Chicago is served by Midway Airport on the south side and O'Hare
International Airport, one of the world's busiest airports, on
the far northwest. Gary/Chicago International Airport, located in nearby
Gary, Indiana,
serves as the third Chicagoland airport. Their service territory
borders Iroquois County to the south, the Wisconsin border to the north,
the Iowa border to the west
and the Indiana border
to the east. In northern Illinois, ComEd (a division of Exelon) operates the greatest number of nuclear
generating plants in any US state.
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