The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority of Illinois’ fiscal manager and acting head, Larita Clark, received the nod to permanently fill the chief executive director’s post.
The board approved the appointment at a meeting Tuesday. Clark is a more than three-decade veteran of the agency that owns and operates the McCormick Place Convention Center complex in Chicago.
Clark, a certified public accountant, started at the agency’s finance department and rose through the ranks. She served as controller from 2010 to 2017 and was named chief financial officer in 2017. Last fall she was named interim CEO and also continued on as CFO after then-CEO Lori Healey departed.
While the board has the final say on the pick, members are appointed by the governor and mayor and typically abide by their recommendations. Clark was the pick of Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Published reports said Mayor Lori Lightfoot initially pressed for a different candidate but both issued statements praising the vote.
“With decades of leadership and financial experience at the authority, I know that Larita will be a strong partner as we work to attract more conventions to Illinois, grow our tourism industry and enhance MPEA’s campus and the surrounding communities,” Pritzker said.
“The McCormick Place campus is critical to Chicago’s thriving tourism and convention industry, and Larita Clark brings the necessary leadership experience and financial acumen to ensure the continued success of this economic engine for our city and state,” Lightfoot said.
MPEA will appoint an interim CFO in the near future, a spokeswoman for the agency said.
Clark takes over as expansion remains on the horizon while debt refinancings, the state’s credit stabilization and a strong economy have eased fiscal pressures.
MPEA has exhausted nearly all of its new money authority and current law caps the maximum amount of annual state sales tax deposits available for expansion project bonds at $350 million. The authority last year was pressing for state approval to expand the district in which a 1% restaurant tax is imposed and allow for new borrowing capacity, but it faltered amid opposition from Lightfoot.
MPEA late last year sold $923 million of refunding bonds achieving savings that allowed the agency to replenish a tax reserve that serves as a “buffer” if the authority’s tourism-related tax revenues fall short of its escalating debt service schedule so it can avoid drawing on the backup pledge of state sales taxes.
The authority once enjoyed a AAA rating from S&P Global Ratings and an AA-minus rating from Fitch Ratings. Both cut the ratings to reflect state appropriation risk after a technical default occurred in 2016 during the state’s two-year budget impasse that ended in mid-2017. S&P rates the agency BBB and Fitch rates it BBB-minus. Moody’s Investors Service rates it at the junk level but is not asked to rate new deals. The authority has $2.8 billion of debt.
MPEA is owner and operator of the 2.6-million-square-foot McCormick Place, two hotels, the Wintrust Arena, and Navy Pier, which is privately operated. The arena is home to DePaul University’s basketball teams and a WNBA professional women's basketball team.
