For several months, Chicago Scenic’s Senior Project Manager Gary Heitz and Design Manager Tom Ryan worked directly for Chicago 2016 Executive Producers Patrick Moloney and Carrie Kennedy, Presentation Producer John Stapleton, and Culture 22, the marketing and design consultant, to create the venue environment.

Chicago’s posh Fairmont Hotel served as headquarters for the events. Starting with a standard meeting space at the Fairmont, Ryan’s designs turned the boxy ballroom (about 60 feet by 48 feet) into a sharp showpiece for the all-important “pitch room”. The result left the room completely transformed, with the central design element of curved walls and curved tables ensuring that all participants had equal viewing of the presentations.

CSSI built the long curved walls that masked the ballroom’s own walls, including two side walls covered in graphics, the front wall that served as a screen surround for the seven-foot-tall by 30-foot-long rear projection screen, and the curved graphic back wall. Ryan also designed the three rows of tables, which were up to 41-feet wide, at which the IOC members and the City’s committee members were seated. The tables were a joint project of McHugh Construction of Chicago and DeLeer’s Millwork of Wisconsin.

While originally hired just for the pitch room design, Ryan noted, “Chicago Scenic quickly became instrumental in suggesting other touches.” In order to extend the Olympics theme throughout the hotel, for instance, Ryan suggested wrapping the lobby’s columns in Olympics-themed graphics and hanging huge transparent graphics in the hotel’s front windows. Ryan also contributed the layout for the IOC’s private meeting suite.

Patrick Moloney even asked CSSI to redesign and produce the IOC’s nameplates the night before the meetings began. CSSI quickly booted up its CNC machine and produced approximately 20 custom Plexiglas® nameplates that helped welcome IOC visitors to their seats.