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This is where the magic happens! Chicago Scenic Studios Tour

I met Ken Glucksberg a couple of months ago, and when he invited me to come by and check out where he works, I excitedly agreed. After all, who turns down a tour from the head carpenter of a specialty shop? Chicago Scenic Studios (CSSI), is a pretty neat place to visit – especially since there are only a handful of shops like it in the country.

CSSI provides customized engineering, project management and fabrication services to museums, national and regional theater companies, corporate and special events, themed environments and broadcasters. It’s a very fancy way of saying that they get to come to work every day and work on cool projects like the set for the Oprah Show, or collaborate with the camera crew in town shooting Transformers 3 recently. Their highly skilled crew regularly deals with projects that require complex carpentry, electro-mechanical interactive development and even digital/analog automation control systems. It’s like the show “Mythbusters” without the reality TV part!

Though they have several buildings around Goose Island in Chicago, most of the exciting stuff happens under one roof, in their 165,000 square foot warehouse studio. Ken told me that I had picked a great day to come for a tour, as I arrived just in time to see the final test of a multiple revolving showcase platform for the upcoming Detroit Auto Show.

After the big debut, Ken walked me around the enormous warehouse and I snapped a few pictures of old sets, equipment they rent out, etc. (pictured below).

After we finished covering the massive studio, we headed into the office to wrap up the tour. Covering the walls of the offices are design boards from prior projects, so I snapped a few. I couldn’t resist being really excited when I happened to stumble across the board of the Real World Chicago house, a show I watched religiously immediately following my move to the Windy City in an attempt to discover the cool places the city had in store.

I don’t anticipate being lucky enough to be able to get involved in a project that requires the highly technical skill set that the crew at CSSI utilize, but should Oprah come calling, you’ll know just who turn to.

Kate Marengo, President of Arranging Order.

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