Discover the Best of Chicago’s North Shore with Gina Speckman

Aaron Masliansky (00:01.395)
Welcome to the Chicagoland Guide, and I'm your host, Aaron Masliansky We are here today with Gina Speckman. Gina is the Executive Director of Chicago's North Shore Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is an organization that helps a lot of the communities throughout the North Shore of the Chicagoland area promote what they do, bring visitors here, great attractions. And I know a lot of times when people think of Chicago, they think of all the great theaters in the city.

But my God, we have a lot of great things that happened in the suburbs here. So Gina, thank you so much for joining me today.

Gina Speckman (00:36.096)
Sure, excited to be here. Thank you.

Aaron Masliansky (00:38.807)
Yeah, no, this is great. There's so many different things to talk about. You know, just to start off with, guess, you know, how did you get to this organization and you know, what's what's its trajectory been?

Gina Speckman (00:53.012)
Okay, I'll give a little background. A lot of people don't know what convention of visitors bureaus are. When I first started in the industry, I was having an informational interview and they asked me, do I know what a bureau is? And I said, the only bureau I know is the FBI. So I always assume that people don't know what we do because we're kind of niche. We're a big industry. There's convention bureaus all over the world, but

people that aren't in the destination marketing field, don't really know from it, okay? So to give an example, there's a state...

Tourism office there's 36 convention of visitors bureaus in the state of Illinois We're certified by the state and the state's all carved up for our different regions We also so we're funded by the state. We're funded by municipalities the county and then individual business members and our job is destination marketing so We want to take everything that we have on the North Shore highlight it so that people from outside the area come here and They stay in hotels. They eat in restaurants

They go to theater, they visit attractions, they shop and spend money here. So that's our goal as destination marketing organizations.

Aaron Masliansky (02:14.411)
And how many communities are part of the Bureau?

Gina Speckman (02:17.824)
We have 10 communities. We go from Lincolnwood on the south and Evanston up to the Lake Cook border, Glencoe, Wheeling. There is another Convention of Visitors Bureau that covers Lake County. And then obviously Chicago has its own Convention Bureau in the metropolitan Chicago area within a drive, a one hour drive of downtown Chicago. There are 14 Convention of Visitors Bureaus.

Aaron Masliansky (02:43.939)
Wow. It's always amazing how many different government or different types of districts there are in the Chicagoland area. I remember growing up, one of my friends and I, we'd always try to quiz each other on all the names of the suburbs and we just keep going and going and going. And it was just our little joke.

Gina Speckman (03:03.2)
Yeah, there's a lot. So people always say, how can you have 14 bureaus? But like our areas are very different. You have the North Core, you have Rosemont, you have the Chicago Southland Bureau, which actually covers 60, 6-0 communities. So we're different in scope and we're different in market. In terms of the kind of visitor that comes to us, we're all different also.

Aaron Masliansky (03:17.56)
Wow.

Aaron Masliansky (03:25.771)
And what's different about the North shore versus some of these other places? I mean, what are some of the types of attractions and what do you like so much about it?

Gina Speckman (03:34.004)
Well, one of the things that people don't really realize is that for our destination, about 65 % of our visitors are coming for a meeting or a conference or an event at a hotel. So we're primarily a business destination and people don't really realize that, but that's what our hotels really are built to serve and that's really what dictates the markets that a bureau goes after.

Obviously, we think that we're unique in that arena and getting that kind of business here because we border the city Chicago. We're close to O'Hare.

We have some major expressways and it's the most beautiful area in all of Chicago land. we always say, we start every description of us says, bordering Chicago along Lake Michigan so that we can differentiate ourselves from all the other suburbs and suburban areas in Chicago land.

Aaron Masliansky (04:30.285)
Yeah, and that's interesting. So it's more so the business community that's attracting people here rather than just straight up tourism, would you say?

Gina Speckman (04:37.972)
Well, it's not the business community. It's the hotels wanting to host groups in there. The hotels here are really built to banquets and meetings and events. So we go after corporations, associations that are holding meetings and conferences and trade shows.

and we have a lot of our staff is devoted into that sales effort. They go to trade shows to interact with meeting planners to book meetings and events into our hotels.

Aaron Masliansky (05:12.321)
And then I'm sure some, organization like Northwestern bring helps bring in some of those attractive types of organizations to be here. And, and then you have like Wheeling where they have the Westin, which is something that was built about 15 years ago, which is a huge space and gives a lot of opportunity for that community.

Gina Speckman (05:20.628)
Yes, well.

Gina Speckman (05:30.248)
Yeah, I mean, Northwestern is not so much that they bring meetings, but.

Northwestern is a Big Ten University and it's what we call in the industry a destination driver. So you have anything from students attending, looking to visit schools that they potentially would attend, people going to Big Ten NCAA Division I competitions, which is way beyond just football and basketball. You have each department within Northwestern having its own symposiums and meetings, the math department, the chemistry department.

So they are a major destination driver for all the things they do.

Aaron Masliansky (06:09.005)
Yeah. And I, you also have like the North Shore Center for Performing Arts, which is near where you're located and they bring in a lot of concerts and you've had like organizations like Space that brings in concerts to Evanston and they've done out of space. What have you had to do with helping collaborate on that effort?

Gina Speckman (06:17.684)
Yes.

Gina Speckman (06:31.796)
Well, we work with all those entities you mentioned very closely. As a matter of fact, this summer, because we saw that there were so many shows going on and a lot of them outdoors, we branded our whole summer leisure campaign Summer of Sound. And so we promoted, you know, we have Ravinia also, even though Ravinia is in Lake County, we still promote it. We've promoted Ravinia, we've promoted all the...

outdoor events that space does. We promoted North Shore Center and the events they do. And then we work with all the different villages and communities that have a lot of festivals and events. A lot of them have.

great music offerings like Skokie Backlot Bash has great concerts that they present as part of that event. So we saw that really this summer was like really heavy in music. had the Winnett Music Festival. So we branded the whole summer campaign this year, Summer of Sound, because of the music that we have here.

Aaron Masliansky (07:31.511)
It was pretty incredible. I I went to some of the concerts. I went to the concert that was in downtown Skokie in the Serial Park, which it was actually a perfect location for a concert. never thought of it that way.

Gina Speckman (07:40.456)
Yes.

Gina Speckman (07:44.82)
Yep. Yep. Out of Space was there. I mean, it was located there because they could not have it in their normal space in Evanston. So they moved it there. Our hope is that they'll continue still to have shows there even when they open up their original space in Evanston outdoors. So yeah, we love that.

Aaron Masliansky (08:05.645)
Yeah, loved it too. And then some of them I know you're going to do, there was going to be a concert by Oakden and McCormick. It got shifted to the North Shore Center for Performing Arts. I went to some of those shows that didn't have as many people as I was expecting, which was interesting, but what happened there? You probably know more than I do.

Gina Speckman (08:15.455)
Yes.

Gina Speckman (08:24.352)
Well, I do. I'm on the North Shore Center Foundation Board, so I do know a lot about it. I think that this was their first time doing an outdoor show. I think that, you know, I talked to a lot of people that come to the Bureau to ask for consulting and help and planning events. And one of the things is if you want to do any outdoor event, you really have to have a plan B if it's going to rain. And a lot of times, I think once people price out what that entails,

it's not so cost effective to have it because you, you know, what if you have thousands of people out in open space and it starts raining? Like what is your plan B? And it sounds everyone wants to be outside in the summer, let's be honest, but you really have to have a plan B a lot of the times.

That was a first time event and I just think that, you know, it was a great start. They learned a lot. I hope they keep continue and do it and I hope it is outdoors next year.

Aaron Masliansky (09:26.219)
I'll tell you, I went to the Grace Potter show and I'd been to several of her concerts and it's usually it's packed and it wasn't so packed that night, but my God, what a cool experience. And it was able to go up there and be right up and she's a huge draw usually. And it was just really a lot of fun. So I hope she comes back to Skokie.

Gina Speckman (09:47.465)
Yes, hopefully.

Aaron Masliansky (09:48.737)
And we'll have more people, but, you know, think that makes sense because if you have rain and you've got lightning or something like that, it's, you can't have people out there.

Gina Speckman (09:56.416)
Well, you have $100,000 of electronic equipment exposed too. So there's a lot involved in it.

Aaron Masliansky (10:03.651)
A lot involved, for sure. And then some of the things though, just about the North Shore, I'm sure you compete with all these other bureaus and organizations around there. I'm here to promote the whole Chicagoland area, right? I I live in Skokie and my office is in Evanston, so I definitely am partial. there's different things going on in politics in Chicago and whatnot.

Do you, how do you use that to be able to help still this area to say, look, this is a great community, great, great options for bringing different conventions and things like that. are you able to kind of draw off of that?

Gina Speckman (10:47.524)
well, we draw off of it. I mean, we we've been really fortunate, I think, ever since COVID that people really are preferring to be in out open, beautiful places versus being in congested.

crowded downtowns. I think also a lot of our communities have really upped the game in terms of the restaurants and the events they have. So you have a lot of city people that moved with young families up to the North Shore and they expect and kind of demand the amenities that they have in the city. But God, they love to be able to go to a great restaurant or go to a concert and not have to go downtown.

Aaron Masliansky (11:09.425)
yeah.

Gina Speckman (11:26.336)
And conversely, we draw people from downtown up here because it's an open, beautiful space. The parking is either free or much cheaper than being downtown. And it's just a great, great experience. we do, think we've kept more people up here that normally will go downtown because they can.

eat in a nice restaurant or go to a show here. They don't have to go downtown. And also people that live downtown that want to get outside of that, you world can have a really beautiful experience and a fun little getaway just coming up here. so close. So I think we've benefited from it on both ends.

Aaron Masliansky (12:07.841)
I totally see that. I've read articles like the Wall Street Journal featured the Chicagoland area showing how a lot of high-end restaurants that are downtown have also relocated to say places in Old Orchard and Skokie and Wilmet, Winnatka. The restaurant scenes were non-existent in some of these suburbs before, but like you said, after COVID, people moved. As a real estate agent, I saw a lot of people moving all over.

Gina Speckman (12:26.441)
Yes.

Gina Speckman (12:34.335)
Yes.

Aaron Masliansky (12:35.619)
And there's demand. You still want those nice things that make the city great, but you want to be able to walk to it. And it's really revitalized these little areas. like Will Met, I think is just a perfect example where you have new residential development on Green Bay. There's going to be some more that's going to be coming soon. Not everyone in the community is super happy about it, but I think as a whole, it's going to be a great thing to bring more people there.

My first episode was Frio Gelato, which has a location in Evanston and Navy Pier, now in Wilmette, and it's a huge hit.

Gina Speckman (13:08.064)
I love them and I haven't been to their new location yet, but they're my favorite, happy.

Aaron Masliansky (13:13.923)
They're delicious. Yeah. And you know, one huge thing that's going to be happening is this redevelopment of old orchard and they're going to be building hundreds of apartments there, more of a lifestyle center. see, you know, Coupi Toll is going to be opening hopefully sometime soon. They have locations in Evanston and in the city, but it's a great coffee spot. Like you need something like that in old orchard where you can go get a coffee, you want a bite to eat.

Gina Speckman (13:23.188)
Yes.

Aaron Masliansky (13:42.381)
have a meeting like that's the spot in Evanston. And I view that as going to be the future spot in Skokie.

Gina Speckman (13:50.078)
yeah, I love that place too. And so I just passed it like a half hour ago. We're so excited for them to open. We work with them already because they're in Evanston, but we're so happy. I mean, the whole trend of these coffee shops where you can also get a great food. We see that with Hometown in Glencoe, which also is now in Winnicka, which now is also opening in Glenview and I think Northbrook.

Aaron Masliansky (14:17.665)
I gotta get them on the show.

Gina Speckman (14:19.272)
Yeah, I mean, that's a great story. It's a lawyer who lived, who worked in a second story in downtown Glencoe and just didn't feel that had a place to go to. And he was a lawyer and now has become this coffee shop, restaurant tour, and he has event space now at that Glencoe location. You know, and he's from Detroit. He's from Detroit like me. So yes, so

Aaron Masliansky (14:43.063)
It's a huge hit. you're from Detroit. My wife's from Detroit. We'll get into that later. Yeah.

Gina Speckman (14:49.086)
You know, just yeah, OK, we can get into that. OK.

Aaron Masliansky (14:55.629)
But no, that's great. And I think it just shows you like the types of opportunities, entrepreneurial opportunities that there are in this region.

Gina Speckman (15:04.04)
Yes, yep, and people be successful and that places like that make people want to just stay around here and not have to go downtown.

Aaron Masliansky (15:06.07)
And you

Aaron Masliansky (15:14.339)
For sure. And you know, what are some of the things like if somebody is looking to find out like what are the great things on the North Shore? What are the things that you cannot miss? Where do you need to go?

Gina Speckman (15:24.692)
Well, depends what you're interested in, but we have a beach. I always have to explain to people, especially people that maybe live in the city where you have cement on the beach or that are not from the area, that we have beaches that have sand and families and lifeguards and the water's clean. We're always doing promotions to explain and use the lakefront as an amenity, the lakefront paths.

We also use a lot of the architecture that you see going along the lakefront, whether it be taking a tour that's done out of the Evanston History Center that shows you Daniel Burnham homes in that neighborhood. There's also the Baha'i House of Worship, is magnificent architectural wonder. The Grosse Pointe Lighthouse.

Aaron Masliansky (16:13.657)
beautiful.

Gina Speckman (16:17.662)
And then basically just driving up and enjoying the lakefront, going up Sheridan Road, and then you can go to the Botanic Garden. So that's a really unique experience that you can't do in a lot of like in Schaumburg or Elgin or some other, you know, suburbs. So we really try to take advantage of the lakefront. You know, we do a lot of group tours and what that is, is we work with park districts and motor coach operators that bring groups here.

and we bring them to the Illinois Holocaust Museum, the Botanic Garden, the Bahá'í. We bring them to the different downtowns we have so they can shop and eat. So we have a staff person that that's all she does is she works with the theaters, the museums, she works with the groups that are seeking places to go to. And the businesses love getting a bus full of business coming to them. And it comes Monday through Friday at a time where they really want it. It comes in the middle of the day.

So that's a whole segment of what we do here also is group tour business.

Aaron Masliansky (17:21.837)
So how does that work? Somebody's, who would be the people calling you for a group tour and like, how do you arrange that?

Gina Speckman (17:28.19)
Well, first of all, like the Tammy, our group tour salesperson, she goes to a lot of trade shows with American Bus Association, bank travel. So there's a lot of people that are always looking for places to go. And obviously we concentrate on motor coach operators in the Midwest. And they're working with what we call now active adults, people 55 or older, that are looking for outings and things to do. So she...

Also has a company called group theater ticks, so I'll help promote that but she's been working with groups for years that Come in groups to see theaters at the North Shore Center and other theaters in the area And now we take them and do unique experiences for those groups So she has a whole database of people that just do this just organized group trips in the Midwest and she Come she compiles compelling itineraries

so that they want to come here. We do behind the scenes tour at Act. You know, you can see how they recycle things. You can see how mail order things shoot through pipes in the ceiling. And then you could have an amazing lunch at Hangar 2. Like so in all our communities, we have different curated experiences that, you know, we can entertain people for four or five hours that come here. And they know that

Aaron Masliansky (18:30.8)
fun.

Gina Speckman (18:54.258)
Every detail of their trip is going to be planned for and taken care of. And so they come again and again and again. And we go again to maybe 12 different trade shows a year in which we interact with the planners and they are always booking things with us. And then we then interact with the restaurants, the attractions, and we act as the receptive operator. So we collect the fee for that the person going on the tour pays.

and then we pay the restaurant, we pay the attraction, and we pay all the businesses that we visit.

Aaron Masliansky (19:30.115)
It's interesting to think about that because being living here, you don't think that it's a tour destination, but really it is. It's just like anywhere where you go. Yeah, if you lived in the middle of New York City, you wouldn't think it. I look at it also, it's just like the wheel starts spinning in my mind about a real estate tour. You have people who come in who want to know what are the great neighborhoods to be able to live in?

Gina Speckman (19:36.532)
Nobody thinks of that when they live.

Gina Speckman (19:42.962)
Exactly.

Aaron Masliansky (19:59.777)
best parks, the best schools, where can I walk to restaurants and things like that and be able to actually see it? And in many ways, I hope to do that with this podcast and everything I do on social, but going and taking a tour and doing that, mean, do you guys do something like that?

Gina Speckman (20:19.417)
We work with real estate agents. They join our organization and they get visitors guides and maps from us. But we also on our website, we have a community page so you can look up the different communities. You can look up their schools. You could look up their chambers, their businesses, their downtown, like get all the information. Because sometimes people are moving here. They're being relocated from like Hartford, Connecticut. They don't know the North Shore from a hole in their head. Okay. So we really try to...

In that sense, we work as almost like a regional chamber. We do not do what a chamber does. I just want to say that we work really closely with all our chambers. We do not duplicate what they do. But if someone, know, someone may not want to have to call 10 different chambers. So they just want an overall idea of the area. Like if they know they're going to be working in Deerfield, they might prefer to live on the north end of our territory. But they can see all that and vet that all out on our website.

So we get a lot of people that are relocating that may or may not be working with an agent that use our information as a tool. another thing that reminds me, which I think is fascinating is 30 % of the people that come to the North Shore are visiting friends and family. we have a whole, there's a whole industry lingo for that, you know, VFF, okay, where

Aaron Masliansky (21:27.585)
I don't know why I've never thought of that, but I'm glad we're having this conversation.

Gina Speckman (21:46.516)
You know, you have to educate the residents because like you, when you live somewhere, you don't picture it as a visitor destination, right? So we try to educate the locals about what to see and do here because when they're hosting friends and family, they're the tour guides. And so we need them to be educated so that they're encouraging people to come and they know what to see and do in the area. So.

We have a really robust events calendar on our website. We do tons in social media. And a lot of our audiences is local people who are like, okay, where can I take my kid this weekend? Or, know, what Halloween thing can I do? Or anything, where can I go golfing? We get so many different questions about experiences. I have teens, what do you have to do that my teen won't roll his eyes at and be bored?

So, or I'm a real big craft beer person. Where are the craft beer, like we, if you go to our webpage and you go like under the seasonal page, you'll see these squares and there's like hundreds of things that are, hoping spark somebody's interest. Where are the best French fries? Where can I get French onion soup? Like you never know what somebody's going to be like, my God, that's my favorite thing to see or do. Or where can I take Instagram pictures? Or where can I, we,

carve up all the great things that are on the North Shore and try to deliver it so that somebody finds something they love to do and want to come here and again, inform local people.

Aaron Masliansky (23:24.673)
I love that. How do you compile all that information?

Gina Speckman (23:27.936)
There's a whole team, okay? mean, it's a lot of work.

Aaron Masliansky (23:29.997)
So what they just scour the internet or call everybody and say, tell me what's going on.

Gina Speckman (23:33.31)
mean, we work with all these people and a lot of us have been here a long time. Next week is my 20 year anniversary. Jennifer on our team's been here 19 years, Carly in our marketing team. We've all been here a long time and so we know the people. So anytime that they're planning a new event, we're the first people that find out about

So, and we post it right away. Like if you go to our events calendar, there's hundreds and hundreds of things on there and you could sort by date. Like, so if you know you're just coming in for a weekend or you need to know what's going on, you could sort by date or you could, you know, or let's say you know that, you know, when is Backlot Bash happening, you know, next year? You could go and just type in Backlot and get that direct.

So a lot of people use this as a resource of what to see and do here. And again, we're just connected with all these events and we get that information. They send it to us. And the good thing about it is we have a really big following. We have a monthly newsletter that has 15,000 subscribers. Our Instagram page, our Facebook has a lot of followers on it. And anytime a business of ours

gives us something that they want put out there. We do not post anything without boosting it. So we don't do any organic posting. Everything is targeted and put out as a boosted post and ad. So a lot of our small businesses, they don't know how to do it. wouldn't, you they don't know how to do it. So they count on us to do it for them because they know that we have a team that just does that.

Aaron Masliansky (24:57.856)
wow.

Aaron Masliansky (25:20.407)
That's really, I was gonna ask you, besides the things that you've been saying, like how other ways that you help support the businesses in the area, and that is a huge support.

Gina Speckman (25:29.898)
That's a huge one because we spend, we have three people that work on it. We, you know, we do reels. We, you know, we not, we feature businesses in reels based on themes, you know, so if you look at our Instagram, you can see a gazillion of them, but you know, we'll always, and we are very cognizant of representing people in all the businesses in all different communities. There's an Excel.

document that would make your head spin. It's like we know how many, know, each community, what kind of, you know, experience we've boosted and promoted every day, because we probably boost your posts like probably six to eight things a day. And there's 365 days in the year, we never rest. So it's a lot.

Aaron Masliansky (26:20.233)
It is a lot. You guys are a huge value to the area.

Gina Speckman (26:24.732)
I think so, but...

Aaron Masliansky (26:26.403)
I think so too. And then, you you said you moved from the Detroit area and where did you end up? Do you live in the North Shore?

Gina Speckman (26:36.574)
I live in Wilmette, so I do live on the North Shore. And I didn't come directly here from Detroit, but I am from Detroit. I basically, I always say this like it makes me sound so old, but I am. But I've been here a long time, but before here, I worked just as long at the Chicago Bureau. I worked at CHU Chicago. So I came here from that Bureau. I'm one of the few people in the industry

that move from one of the largest bureaus to a smaller one. Most people go from smaller bureaus to larger bureaus, and I did the opposite.

Aaron Masliansky (27:12.739)
What do you think of that? mean, is it different? Do you enjoy it more?

Gina Speckman (27:16.433)
I really like it. I like being my own boss. I love my old job. I still call it my old job. I've been here for 20 years. Okay, but I loved working in Chicago because I had just moved to Chicago and I didn't know the city at all. And I thought, my God, what a way to learn a city by working at the Tourism Bureau for that city. I didn't know where Michigan Avenue was. I mean, I knew nothing. And I thought, I'll move here for two or three years and I'll meet a lot of people and then I'll move on.

and it ended up being there 17 years. yes, I'm not a job hopper.

Aaron Masliansky (27:48.407)
Yeah, you have longevity at places. Yeah. No. And how did you decide to live in Wilmette of all places in the North shore?

Gina Speckman (27:58.412)
Well, that was a tough one because again, I have no feeling for any of these places because I'm from Detroit. My husband's born and raised in Evanston and Wilmette was about as far as he'd go. So we moved, but the joke is we moved from Rogers Park where we live two blocks south of Evanston. And now we just live a couple of blocks north of Evanston. So we spend most of our time in Evanston, but,

Aaron Masliansky (28:12.611)
It borders it.

Gina Speckman (28:27.608)
We had kids, we wanted, they had a great time in Wilmette. Now they're not in schools anymore there, so we could go anywhere we want in theory.

Aaron Masliansky (28:38.423)
Yeah. It's, you know, it's, I think, I think one of the things about the North shore is that you have so many different types of places. So if you want something like a walkable, you want a condo, you want an apartment, you want a house, you want land, like there are options within it. And it's been, I could speak from experience over the past few years, it has been really desirable to move up here and competitive, extremely competitive, but it's,

So it's a good time to own the place, but how do you advise people who are looking to move here? What would be the first steps of what they should do to kind of get it? They're coming from Detroit. They know nobody here. They know nothing about these areas. What do you do?

Gina Speckman (29:22.768)
Well, first of all, there is nobody from Detroit that doesn't know anybody on the North Shore. So that's never going to happen.

Aaron Masliansky (29:25.683)
No, that's true. All right, you're coming from Anchorage, Alaska. Let's do that.

Gina Speckman (29:32.788)
Thank you, that's a little better. I mean, you know, I would hope that people would visit a place before they move there. And I think that, you know, you really, you really have to see like, like for me, I love being by the lake, okay. My husband hates sand. He literally has a t-shirt that says, I hate sand. Okay. And, you know, so for him being near the beach, he doesn't care about it.

But for some people, like they might want that. They might want to be able to walk to a metro train if they're working downtown. So being close to transportation or being close, like I live by also the, a large outdoor swimming pool, our city pool in Wilmette. Like that is great. I love that I can walk to old orchard. So some people don't walk anywhere and so they can drive and be happy and they don't need to be by certain things.

I think that a person really needs to drive around and see all the different communities that here. They're all great, but you really have the preference. And I feel for people with young families, to me, I always advise people, begins and ends with schools. Some districts have way bigger schools than others. Some people aren't comfortable with that. So if school is a main motivator of why you are looking at different neighborhoods, you should really research that.

Again, how close you want to be by the lake, how close you want to be to public transportation, if you want to be near a walkable downtown, and how much land you want. I mean, I did that research when we moved. It was really interesting, like what X amount of money could get in different communities. I did that whole analysis, and you've got to prioritize what's important to you.

Aaron Masliansky (31:21.559)
I think that's an interesting kind of study to look at, what can $500,000 get me in each place? And it's a huge difference.

Gina Speckman (31:29.676)
I don't want to get into what ended up happening with me, but that's exactly the kind of thing you had to compare.

Aaron Masliansky (31:36.769)
for sure. And then, you know, what do you see on the horizon for the North Shore? Are there any big major, I mean, I spoke a little bit about how old orchards is going to be redeveloped, but what are some big things that you think you see happening and trends?

Gina Speckman (31:51.092)
Well, we're really excited about the new Northwestern Stadium. I think that stadium is going to be gorgeous, fantastic. It'll be really talked about. I mean, I think we were so surprised at how people love the outdoors, temporary stadium that the football team played in this year. wait, it was expensive to go.

Aaron Masliansky (32:10.147)
tickets are expensive.

Aaron Masliansky (32:15.555)
to go, if you want to get the cheap seats at the temporary stadium, it's like minimum $150 a ticket, which is

Gina Speckman (32:23.04)
I went to the Duke game and bought a ticket for $20 on my own. Yep.

Aaron Masliansky (32:27.575)
You did. Okay. So maybe it was just the Indiana game I was looking at and that's

Gina Speckman (32:31.624)
Yeah, I mean, I think that the conference games are harder. But for me, the whole experience is being in that stadium was so I went to a night game too. I didn't know what to expect. It was a fantastic experience. I mean, it didn't matter the team to me at that point. I wanted to see what they did there. And I don't think anyone expected I think they expected it was something they had to do while they were building new stadium.

Aaron Masliansky (32:49.442)
No.

Gina Speckman (32:57.856)
I don't know if you saw the Wall Street Journal article, but there was a whole article about what's the hottest ticket in football. And it was like Northwestern. I mean, the experience was magical. So I'm excited that we still have another year of it next year. Like, I don't think anyone anticipated that that would be something people would want to seek out and do is go to that temporary stadium, but that's great. And then the new stadium is going to open and that's going to be

really popular people are going to want to see it from everywhere. It's going to be very unique for a Big Ten football stadium.

Aaron Masliansky (33:33.251)
Yeah. And I think, you know, there was a lot of pushback on that new stadium. But I think once it's done, people forget about that. And I've seen some of the drawings, renderings of what it's going to look like and it's going to be beautiful. And, know, one thing too that is kind of lost is that the old stadium did not really have ADA accessibility and you couldn't get in there.

Gina Speckman (33:48.575)
Yes.

Gina Speckman (33:56.946)
It did. And when you go in the new stadium from the ground level, you're already going to be like exactly where you need to be. You're not going to have to go up or down. And it's going to be more in the ground of the stadium. And the other thing, and I'm kind of like how I described it was there's going to be, you know, the the way that the stadium's position is going to be a little different and there's going to be like green space all around it.

and you know right now the old stadium had asphalt and chain link fence so I just think the experience of what they're going to do like farmers markets and yoga and things are to be able to do on the area around the stadium is going to be just really amazing.

Aaron Masliansky (34:43.459)
It's a huge draw. I think there's so many different things that make the North Shore fantastic. I can see it, it makes your job easier because there's so many different types of things that you can talk about. We talked about the events, the different styles of neighborhoods and things that you can find here are just really incredible. I think that people, a lot of these communities invest in making sure that this stays a wonderful place to live in and play.

Gina Speckman (35:13.184)
Right. Yes.

Aaron Masliansky (35:13.237)
and work. Yeah. So if people want to find out more, where should they look online and social media for you guys?

Gina Speckman (35:22.354)
Our website is visitchicagonoreshore.com and our social media is at Chicago North Shore.

Aaron Masliansky (35:30.563)
Well, I will post that all out there in the show notes and get the word out there for everybody looking in the North Shore to learn more about it, have a lot of fun. Thank you. And Gina, I appreciate your time today and thank you everybody for listening or watching wherever you may be.

Gina Speckman (35:39.498)
Thank you.

Gina Speckman (35:46.612)
Thanks. Thank you so much.

Aaron Masliansky (35:48.387)
Thank you.