March 17, 2020 – On March 16, 2020, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker mandated that social gatherings of 50 or more people be cancelled for the next eight weeks.  Given other recent developments in the Covid-19 crisis, we anticipated that some sort of ban might be imposed that would make it impossible to hold our convention at its scheduled time in April, 2020.  Out of concern for the health of our extended family of attendees, dealers and staff, for the past week we had been working with our hotel — the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, Illinois — to attempt to reschedule our convention.

We can now announce that we’ve just reached an agreement to postpone the convention to September 11-13, 2020. The location of the convention remains the same, and we thank the fine folks at the Westin Lombard for working with us to make this change.  All attendance pricing remains the same and all existing dealer table reservations and membership pre-registrations will be honored for the revised convention dates. Convention programming and hours, including dealer setup the night before the convention begins, will remain the same.  While the show will be later in the year than usual, we will work hard to make our 20th anniversary show our best one ever!  (And with the revised dates, any possibility of snow, even in Chicago, has been eliminated.)

If you had existing hotel reservations at the Westin, those should be cancelled automatically (though you may want to double-check). Those members with reservations at hotels other than the Westin and all members with travel reservations are advised to revise their bookings.  The new cut-off date for the convention room rate of $122 per night at the Westin will be August 27, 2020.

We very much regret any inconvenience to our members caused by this rescheduling.  We are glad that we didn’t have to cancel and are hopeful that the revised dates will give everyone time to update their plans.  If you cannot attend on the rescheduled dates for 2020 and have already pre-registered (or reserved dealer tables), please let us know (using the “Contact” option at windycitypulpandpaper.com or email to info@windycitypulpandpaper.com) as soon as possible and we will transfer your registration/reservation to our 2021 convention instead or refund your money, at your election.

We are revising our web site to correspond to the rescheduled 2020 dates.  We would appreciate it if folks could share this news, so that we reach everyone who was interested in attending our convention.

Stay safe and keep collecting!