The address is 1059 W Addison St. and you can see the red Wrigley Field Home of the Chicago Cubs sign and the Ernie Banks statue from our draft room. I went there yesterday and it really is an amazing location. We don't have a signed agreement yet, but all of the details are in place and both parties are good to go.
Cubby Bear Wrigleyville will have free parking for us right there, so there will be no hassle of finding a spot or having to walk blocks and blocks to get to the restaurant/bar. The establishment has 30,000 square feet of space, but we are upstairs and in a private room where there is 7,000 square feet of space. We will have our own private entrance, our own private bar and our own buffet for food at the breaks. There are TVs everywhere and we'll use them sparingly or in the proper places to keep up on the NCAA games.
For more information on Cubby Bear Wrigleyville, go to:
http://www.cubbybear.com/wrigleyville/
You can click on Gallery to see the Wrigley Room.
The only concern with that room is that there are a lot of pillars in that room. We will need to get somewhat creative with one or two of the U's as we may become more vertical than symmetrical on those. Also, we are likely limited to five leagues at most in that room, so first-come, first-served in Chicago. We'll gladly take 75 teams there for the main event and if we get more than that we'll need to rent out The Upper Deck, which I also looked at yesterday.
On Friday and Sunday, we'll host the Live Double Plays and the Auction Championships in the Wrigley Room at the same time. There are no walls between them, but the room is big enough to host two or three of those at once. And again we'll have the bar available and some food for our participants.
We've been at convention centers too long in Chicago and it's time to add some spice and life to the live drafts in the Windy City. Having this in the shadow of Wrigley Field and near downtown will be something different in 2010 and will hopefully create some added interest in our event. Cubby Bear has several locations in Chicago and they will promote this on their web site and within their emails and newsletters that they send out. They can help us grow the NFBC through their strong customer base.
So we are excited to make this announcement and look forward to a great three days of drafts and auctions at Cubby Bear Wrigleyville. Thanks for your patience while we finalized all of this, but we think this can be something special for our participants.
Okay Windy City participants, provide some feedback on this. We want to hear from you. Free parking, food, drink, private entrance, Wrigley Field in the background, is that okay? Are you ready for some baseball?!!!
