5-Aug-15 – It was definitely a “hyper-local” news website before we had heard of the term. It is arguably one of the first hyper-local news sites in Chicago.

But with news content moved to loopnorth.com and the first comprehensive history of Marina City moved to marinacity.org, Marina City Online is retiring after ten years of service.

Established on September 17, 2005, MCO published no news stories for two years but made up for lost time, publishing 1,738 stories from October 30, 2007, to July 22, 2015.

The first published news story was about Marina City Online, how the website had hired an attorney to defend against a claim by Marina Towers Condominium Association that it had a “common law copyright” on the association’s “name and image,” upon which MCO’s website about Marina City was allegedly infringing.

Over the years, the coverage area expanded north into the River North neighborhood of downtown Chicago and south into the Loop. Today, with no shortage of news outlets covering downtown Chicago, our news stories have moved to LoopNorth.com, a website with a more-competitive sounding name that more accurately describes the area we now cover, Chicago’s Loop and Near North Side.

According to Google Analytics, 391,740 people have visited Marina City Online. Earlier this year, MCO was a finalist for a Chicago Headline Club Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the Best Neighborhood / Community News website category.

To thank the hundreds of people who helped make this happen would not only take too long but also it would suggest we’ve reached some sort of pinnacle, and our work is just beginning.

Links to old news stories will still work, redirecting automatically to the new site. In addition to the 1,738 stories, loopnorth.com now hosts MCO’s 6,627 images. Marinacity.org currently hosts 99 chapters of Marina City history and 407 images and this will continue to grow.

As always, whether you are grazing or feasting, Loop North will work to satisfy readers hungry for information about their world north of Adams Street and south of Chicago Avenue.