Bally’s River West casino proposal gets city nod

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is betting big on Bally’s.

Lightfoot on Thursday confirmed the East Coast gambling company as her pick to run Chicago’s coveted casino at the busy River West site of the Tribune printing plant at Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street.

The mayor’s choice for the house of chance, first reported Tuesday by the Chicago Sun-Times, marks an upset of sorts for Bally’s. The publicly traded company has acquired rather than built most of the 14 casinos in its national portfolio — none of them remotely close in size to the $1.7 billion plan they’re envisioning along the Chicago River.

Bally’s got Lightfoot’s nod over two rival bids, both earmarked for the South Loop: one from gaming behemoth Hard Rock International and another from hometown favorite Rush Street Gaming, chaired by billionaire Rivers Casino Des Plaines mogul Neil Bluhm.

Bally’s got Lightfoot’s blessing in no small part due to a labor agreement it signed with several unions, locking up key political support from organized labor that will be vital as the mayor tries to get her casino pick approved by the City Council.

That will be no small task, as neighboring aldermen and a vocal contingent of River North residents vehemently oppose the development at an already congested intersection.

“It’s already a traffic bottleneck under the best of conditions. To add a casino at that location — it just won’t work,” Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) said earlier this week.

Hopkins said area residents almost universally oppose the site because of its “logistical challenges,” referring to the traffic issues that hundreds of River North residents bemoaned during Bally’s public meeting last month.

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) agreed that the neighborhood response so far has been “overwhelmingly negative.”

Bally’s chairman Soo Kim has argued their plan, with a series of traffic signal upgrades, would actually help reduce congestion. Supporters note the property already is zoned for a much denser development than even the casino. The City Council in 2018 agreed to allow 4.5 million square feet of offices to be built there, plus a hotel and more than 4,000 residences.

An ongoing survey by the River North Residents Association has found nearly 81% of 2,311 respondents are opposed to the casino.

“This is not NIMBY-style opposition,” Brian Israel, president of the residents’ group, said Tuesday. “We support positive development in our community. I don’t want this thing in anybody’s backyard.”

Hopkins also criticized Lightfoot’s end-around of a special City Council committee she appointed with the stated purpose of voting on all casino matters. That committee has met only once and hasn’t brought any issues to a vote. It’s scheduled to meet again Monday.

But Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), whose ward includes the actual casino site, has said he’d rather accept the gambling mecca than call for a property tax increase. The city is desperate to get a casino up and running for its estimated $192 million in annual tax revenue, earmarked for desperately underfunded police and firefighter pension funds. Bally’s, if selected, also offered to make a direct upfront payment to the city of $25 million.

“If we can come up with an alternative to raise money, then I’m cool,” Burnett said earlier this week. “We don’t have to have it. But I don’t know where we’re gonna get $200 million a year, along with the $25 million to $75 million up front.”

Even in Lightfoot’s best-case scenario, the future Chicago casino is still likely at least a year away from opening a temporary site, also on the Tribune property.

If the City Council approves their plan, Bally’s would have to apply for a license from the Illinois Gaming Board. That agency has taken at least a year to review each of the other five new casinos that were authorized along with Chicago’s in a sweeping gambling expansion signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2019.

Bally’s plan also calls for a luxury hotel, indoor and outdoor entertainment venues, green spaces, fine dining options and a “Chicago sports museum.”