Trade shows: High prices at McCormick Place costing Chicago

The Chicago Tribune reports:

For more than two decades, Steve Maguire has been trekking to McCormick Place to hawk massive processing equipment used to make everyday plastics products, from toys to garbage bags.

This year, the manufacturing executive, fed up with exhibition costs, kept his two companies at home from the triennial plastics industry show.

It's not just the big-ticket items that rankle Maguire, like a $22,000 tab to move one company's equipment from the convention hall's neighboring truck yard to its exhibit booth, and back after the show. That was more than triple the round-trip expense of shipping it from Baltimore. The smaller charges grate as well, from the $800 a night to have the other firm's booth carpet vacuumed and the trash cans emptied, to the $100 a day for a pot of coffee in the booth.

"You just can't stand being taken advantage of, and that's what they do there," said Maguire, who is president of Maguire Products, of Aston, Pa., and majority owner of Novatec Inc., of Baltimore. "When the economy got so bad, this was an easy one to cut."

For more on Chicago's decline.