Grant Park is a large urban park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Located within the city's central business district, the park's features include, Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Campus. Originally known as Lake Park, and dating from the city's founding, it was renamed in 1901 to honor US President Ulysses S. Grant. The park's area has been expanded several times through land reclamation, and was the focus of several disputes in the late 19th century and early 20th century over open space use. It is bordered on the north by Randolph Street, on the south by Roosevelt Road and McFetridge Drive, on the west by Michigan Avenue and on the east by Lake Michigan. The park contains performance venues, gardens, art work, sporting, and harbor facilities. It hosts public gatherings and several large annual events.
Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Navy Pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants, family attractions and exhibition facilities and is one of the top destinations in the Midwestern United States, drawing nearly two million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest and is Chicago's second most visited tourist attraction.
Frank Joseph Zamboni, Jr. was an American inventor and engineer, whose most famous invention is the modern ice resurfacer, with his surname being registered as a trademark for these devices.
Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and managed by MB Real Estate. The park was intended to celebrate the third millennium and is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre (99,000 m2) section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously occupied by parkland, Illinois Central's rail yards, and parking lots. The park, which is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive, features a variety of public art. As of 2009, Millennium Park trailed only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction and by 2017 it had become the number one tourist attraction in the Midwestern United States. In 2015, the park became the location of the city's annual Christmas tree lighting.
An ice rink is a frozen body of water and/or hardened chemicals where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Besides recreational ice skating, some of its uses include ice hockey, bandy, rink bandy, ringette, broomball, speed skating, figure skating, ice stock sport and curling as well as exhibitions, contests and ice shows. There are two types of rinks in prevalent use today: natural, where freezing occurs from cold ambient temperatures, and artificial, where a coolant produces cold temperatures in the surface below the water, causing the water to freeze. There are also synthetic ice rinks where skating surfaces are made out of plastics.
An ice resurfacer is a vehicle or hand-pushed device used to clean and smooth the surface of a sheet of ice, usually in an ice rink. The first ice resurfacer was developed by American inventor and engineer Frank Zamboni in 1949 in the city of Paramount, California. As such, an ice resurfacer is often referred to as a "Zamboni" regardless of brand or manufacturer. In recent years, Zambonis have become an integral part of Canadian culture, as iconic to Canadians as the McRib is to Americans.
Frank J. Zamboni & Company is an American manufacturer of ice resurfacing equipment based in Paramount, California. Frank J. Zamboni developed the first ice resurfacing machine in 1949, and started the Zamboni Company in 1950. Zamboni is an internationally registered trademark.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion, also known as Pritzker Pavilion or Pritzker Music Pavilion, is a bandshell in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the south side of Randolph Street and east of the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. The pavilion was named after Jay Pritzker, whose family is known for owning Hyatt Hotels. The building was designed by architect Frank Gehry, who accepted the design commission in April 1999; the pavilion was constructed between June 1999 and July 2004, opening officially on July 16, 2004.
King Pine Ski Area is a ski resort located in Madison, Carroll County, New Hampshire.
Chicago tourism recorded 55 million visitors in 2017. In 2016, Chicago saw 54.1 million visitors; a 2.9% increase from 2015. In 2015, it was estimated that 50.1 million visitors came to Chicago, which was a 4.5 percent increase from 2014. From 2010 through 2014, the tourism and hospitality industries have added 9,800 jobs, generating $13.7 billion in direct spending by visitors and $871 million in total tax revenue. In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million visitors that year.
Lasker Rink is a seasonal ice skating rink and swimming pool located at North Meadow in the northern part of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, between 106th and 108th Streets. It is located above The Loch, just south of the Farmers Gate entrance on 110th Street and Lenox Avenue, between Harlem Meer to the east and East Drive to the west.
The BP Pedestrian Bridge, or simply BP Bridge, is a girder footbridge in the Loop community area of Chicago, United States. It spans Columbus Drive to connect Maggie Daley Park with Millennium Park, both parts of the larger Grant Park. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry and structurally engineered by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, it opened along with the rest of Millennium Park on July 16, 2004. Gehry had been courted by the city to design the bridge and the neighboring Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and eventually agreed to do so after the Pritzker family funded the Pavilion.
McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink or McCormick Tribune Plaza is a multi-purpose venue within Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. On December 20, 2001, it became the first attraction in Millennium Park to open. The $3.2 million plaza was funded by a donation from the McCormick Tribune Foundation. It has served as an ice skating rink, a dining facility and briefly as an open-air exhibition space.
AT&T Plaza is a public space that hosts the Cloud Gate sculpture. It is located in Millennium Park, which is a park built to celebrate the third millennium and which is located within the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. The sculpture and the plaza are sometimes jointly referred to as Cloud Gate on the AT&T Plaza.
Chase Promenade is an open-air, tree-lined, pedestrian walkway that opened July 16, 2004. It is part of Millennium Park, which is located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. The promenade was made possible by a gift from the Bank One Foundation. It is 8 acres (3.2 ha) and used for exhibitions, festivals and other family events as well as private rentals.
The Chicago Lakefront Trail (LFT) is a 18.5-mile-long (29.8 km) partial shared use path for walking, jogging, skateboarding, and cycling, located along the western shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The trail passes through and connects Chicago's four major lakefront parks along with various beaches and recreational amenities. It also serves as a route for bicycle, skateboard and personal transporter commuters. On busy summer days 70,000 people use the trail.
Resurfice Corporation is a manufacturer of ice resurfacing equipment based in Elmira, Ontario, Canada. Their Olympia brand product line includes push models through full size models built on a Chevy Powertrain. In early 2009, Don Schlupp, the company's director of sales and marketing, said that the company had about a 70% share of the market in North America, but later that year the company said it produces about the same number of machines as Zamboni.
Located at 121 Donald Lynch Boulevard in Marlborough, Massachusetts, the New England Sports Center is a two-story, eight-rink ice-skating facility located on 22.3 acres (90,000 m2) of suburban land. The 220,000-square-foot (20,000 m2) building has over 65 locker rooms, a hockey pro shop, ice skate sharpening, ice skate rentals, function rooms, a full-service restaurant, and a snack bar. In addition to the eight full-size rinks, the facility has two miniature ice surfaces, Rinks 9 and 10. Host to the Haydenettes, home to the Skating Club of Boston Metrowest, the Minuteman Flames, Central Mass. Outlaws, and the Junior Bruins hockey teams, the New England Sports Center is noteworthy for having more ice-skating surfaces than any other arena in the New England area.
The Park Grill is the only full-service restaurant included in the multibillion-dollar Millennium Park project in Chicago, Illinois. Its outdoor seating area is the largest al fresco dining area in Chicago. It has placed among the leaders in citywide best-of competitions for best burger and is widely praised for its views.
Maggie Daley Park is a 20-acre (81,000 m2) public park in the Loop community area of Chicago operated by the Chicago Park District and managed by MB Real Estate. It is near the Lake Michigan shoreline in northeastern Grant Park where Daley Bicentennial Plaza previously stood. Maggie Daley Park, like its predecessor, is connected to Millennium Park by the BP Pedestrian Bridge. Designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, the park had its ceremonial ribbon cutting on December 13, 2014, and is named for Maggie Daley, the former first lady of the city who died of cancer in 2011. The park was almost entirely remade with multiple new features including a new field house, an ice skating ribbon, climbing walls, landscaping and children's playground. An older section of the park maintains a garden dedicated earlier to honor cancer survivors. The park is bounded by Randolph Street, Monroe, Columbus and Lake Shore Drives. Construction took 2 years and cost $60 million, including rebuilding an underground parking lot.
