After 25 years on the air, Oprah Winfrey, the queen of daytime television, brings her show to an end Wednesday. It's a bittersweet moment for Chicago, the city where Winfrey brought plenty of attention — and money.
Winfrey's Harpo Studios is a landmark in Chicago's West Loop: The facility takes up a full block in a neighborhood of loft condos, restaurants, art galleries and the remnants of a Chicago market district of food processors and manufacturers.
Harpo opened in 1990, in a neighborhood that had been on the decline for years, says Phil Ashton, a professor of urban planning at University of Illinois-Chicago. The studio was a cornerstone of the neighborhood's revival, and it "introduced a population of employees and consumers who were there on a day-by-day basis," Ashton says.
Chef Ina Pinkney, owner of Ina's Restaurant, a Harpo executive hangout, knows full well the before-and-after Oprah effect. Before Pinkney moved her restaurant into the West Loop, she used to buy produce in the area. "I remember the neighborhood as incredibly rough," Pinkney says. "It was just a place you came to buy your stuff and go home."
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