McCormick Place West Hall Conference Center Stormwater Reclamation Tunnel and "Green Roof" Helps Advance Chicago's Clean Water Agenda

The McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago has undergone a dramatic expansion to remain one of the premier convention venues in this country. The new West Hall designers recognized early on that the City combined sewer system was beyond capacity resulting in periodic flooding and overflow to the Chicago River. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) initially considered traditional stormwater management alternatives including onsite detention and new gravity sewers to manage runoff from 70 acres of convention center rooftop. MPEA decided to pursue a "green" approach to stormwater management to complement other environmentally sensitive design features employed at this project. AECOM devised a stormwater conveyance system that would carry clean rain water from the convention center roof to Lake Michigan thereby diverting as much as 55 million gallons of stormwater from the City's combined sewer system each year.