Owners Name Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall in Kane County, Ill.

A new events center in St. Charles, Ill., finally has a name, local newspaper the Geneva Sun reported last week. The facility, which opened in July 2009, went unnamed until earlier this month, when its owners officially christened it "The Prairie Events Center."

Owned by the Kane County Fair and located on the Kane County Fairgrounds, The Prairie Events Center features a 36,000-square-foot exhibit hall that's open year-round for small and mid-sized trade shows. Its owners hope the facility will appeal to meeting planners throughout the Midwest who want to meet near Chicago, but also want to avoid the cost of a downtown event.

"We accomplished a couple of things with the name," Kane county Fair Executive Manager Chris Unger told the Sun. "We wanted to separate the events center from the fairgrounds. For the kind of shows we are trying to get, we wanted to overcome a stigma that goes along with a fairground. People automatically think of barns, and of buildings that are not of an exhibit center caliber. So we wanted to separate that."

For more information, visit www.prairieeventscenter.com.