Entrepreneur Bets $50 Million on Luxury Magic Shows for Dressed-Up Audiences

Glen Tullman has spent a career betting on things that weren't supposed to work. As the former CEO of Allscripts and founder of Livongo Health, he helped reshape how Americans interact with their doctors. Now the 65-year-old Chicago entrepreneur is wagering $50 million that a dressed-up crowd will pay top dollar to watch magicians perform inside a historic mansion, night after night, indefinitely.

The venue, called The Hand & The Eye, occupies the McCormick Mansion at 100 E. Ontario St., transforming the five-level, 36,000-square-foot building that most recently housed Lawry's Prime Rib into what Tullman bills as the world's largest venue dedicated to the art of magic. The space houses 37 magic rooms and seven theaters, and visitors are guided through secret passageways while encountering "world-class" magicians along the way, with the experience designed to be intimate and personalized to groups as they move through the mansion.

The business model is built around an all-inclusive ticket, not a cover charge. The Hand & The Eye plans to open seven nights a week and sell a single inclusive ticket that moves audiences through numerous performances and a dinner, with patrons making timed reservations and then traversing all the rooms in a bespoke fashion. The price point has not been set, but it is not expected to be cheap. Tullman described his intent to offer an upscale, all-adult experience with a dress code, saying "This will not be a jeans and sneakers kind of place." The venue also plans to offer club memberships for residents and regulars, allowing members the ability to come and go to the various stages and bars through a dedicated entrance. Members, Tullman said, will be required to learn a magic trick, but otherwise memberships will be open to everyone, creating a Soho House-like experience, albeit with an illusionary theme.

That Soho House comparison is deliberate. Bre Smith, the executive leading the venue's operations, previously held senior roles at The Ritz-Carlton, Ambassador Chicago, and Soho House, bringing over two decades of guest experience and brand storytelling expertise to the project. The dual-track revenue model, one-night ticket buyers and recurring members paying for access to bars and resident magicians, mirrors the private-club playbook that Soho House used to anchor urban real estate across a dozen cities.

The closest comparable existing venue is the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, first opened in 1963. The Hand & The Eye will be larger than that storied venue by roughly 10,000 square feet. The Magic Castle, which seats around 150 and spans approximately 24,000 square feet, has operated as a membership club for six decades. Tullman's version is open to any paying guest willing to dress for the occasion, a deliberately wider funnel.

The design is handled by David Rockwell, the New York-based architect behind Broadway productions and restaurants including Nobu and Tao Chicago. Rockwell's firm unveiled renderings showing layered materials, ornate furniture, gilded lighting, and 1800s artwork and artifacts gathered from collectors around the world, with the original lamps on the historic façade restored as part of the project. Jeff Kaylor, the venue's EVP of Magic, framed the design-magic collaboration as inseparable: "Every room, passage, and detail has been conceived to heighten what close-up magic does best: create wonder in proximity."

The $50 million project represents a major investment in the Magnificent Mile, a retail corridor that has struggled in recent years. Tullman has made no secret of who he sees filling those seven theaters. "People come to Chicago from Iowa and Indiana and they want to be amazed," he said. "This will amaze them." The tourism logic is straightforward: out-of-town visitors need a destination that bars and chain restaurants cannot replicate, and that a sports event cannot offer every night of the week.

The Hand & The Eye will employ some 200 people, with Levy Restaurants running the dining operation. Whether the experience commands the ticket prices that justify a $50 million build-out in one of Chicago's priciest corridors remains the central question. Tullman, at least, has already answered it for himself: "This is not some six-month pop-up thing. This is a once-in-a-generation project." If he's wrong, that will be the most expensive disappearing act the Magnificent Mile has ever seen.