Roseville, Minnesota
Location, location, location: The three most important words in real-estate development are also the three biggest reasons planners choose to hold events in Roseville, Minnesota, smack in the middle of Minneapolis and St. Paul and just three miles from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
“You get a lot of horse shows and agricultural businesses because the fairgrounds are right in the background,” said Carrie Ford, director of sales and marketing for the Roseville Visitors Association.
But meeting planners who simply need a well-located meeting space for groups of 400 or fewer are also spoiled for choice in Roseville and can benefit from nontraditional meeting spaces in settings like the Roseville Skating Center, home to one of North America’s largest sheets of outdoor refrigerated ice, and the fairgrounds, the site of 320 acres of outdoor grounds and more than a dozen 10,000-to-60,000-square-foot buildings available for rent.
“One thing that makes us unique for planners is that a lot of venues offer complimentary parking and lower hotel and lodging taxes, so you can save up to 5 percent on lodging alone,” said Ford.
She also recommends that groups don’t miss the Twin Cities. By car, only 10 minutes separate Roseville from the attractions in Minneapolis and St. Paul, so it’s easy to use the suburb for rooms and event space and still bring your group in for a reception and tour at the waterfront Mill City Museum or an evening show at the world-renowned Guthrie Theater.
Rosemont, Illinois
Though once known best for its proximity to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Rosemont has capitalized on its location to turn the 4,200-resident village into an international shopping and meeting destination that draws tens of thousands of visitors a day.
Named one of the top 50 meeting destinations by Cvent in both 2013 and 2014, Rosemont benefits from an 840,000-square-foot convention center, the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, along with numerous full-service hotel conference centers.
On the larger end of the spectrum are the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel and Conference Center, with 55,000 square feet of meeting space, and the convention center-connected Hilton Rosemont Chicago O’Hare, with 22,000 square feet of meeting space.
In Rosemont, groups have an unusual amount of big-name entertainment for not only a village of this size, but even a small city of 100,000. The Allstate Arena attracts musical talent on the scale of Andrea Bocelli and Enrique Iglesias, and the Rosemont Theatre hosts touring Broadway shows.
