The bright sunshine in downtown Chicago was a welcome sight for Detroit resident Duane Verhelst and his wife, Jessica.
They watched the rain-soaked NASCAR street races from the comfort of their Michigan Avenue hotel room this past weekend.
“We had a pretty good view of the curve,” Duane said. “I got the sights and the sounds, and the smells, and we didn’t have to pay for a ticket.”
The 2.2-mile course that snaked through much of Grant Park began coming down Monday, as crews worked to dismantle the track, fencing and grandstands.
Legendary Oakton and DePaul Track coach Pat Savage was among those who watched it get dismantled.
He hosted a fundraiser at the Cliff-Dweller’s Club over the weekend and now considers himself a new NASCAR fan.
“It’s great for the city,” he said.
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Savage said his friends enjoyed it as well.
Still, with the traffic problems it created, and the delays and cancellations brought about by torrential rains, some are asking if the two-day event was worth it.
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A study commissioned by NASCAR and the city of Chicago from Minnesota-based CSL International projected that more than 100,000 people would attend the event, with almost 40% spending the night. That would have accounted for 24 thousand hotel room nights in the city of Chicago.
While it's unknown how many hotel rooms were booked, the actual numbers are expected on Wednesday.
NASCAR also projected more than $50 million would be spent on construction, race services and labor. That would bring the estimated economic impact to almost $114 million.
But experts like Allen Samuelson, a University of Chicago economist who specializes in sports economics said the estimates may be generous.
“Take whatever number they give you and divide it by ten and you will be pretty close,” he said.
Samuelson said the race may have discouraged tourists who had considered coming to the downtown to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday.
Security is always a major cost at large events like a NASCAR race or the Olympics, Samuelson said. So are the possibilities of protests or major crashes that could have shown the city in a negative light.
Was bringing NASCAR to Chicago a good deal?
Samuelson said it wasn’t a bad one.
Discounting the rain and challenges it created, Samuelson said, “nothing really bad happened, so it could have been a lot worse.
Duane Verhelst, meanwhile, has plans to book his stay for next year’s race.
If the weekend were as sunny as it is on Monday, “you guys would have had five times as many people out there,” he said.
