Final casino opens, but it may not be the last 

The 10^th and final (at least for now) Illinois casino, the $445 million Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, the first casino in Cook County, opened last week, creating a traffic jam that brought cars to a standstill on several nearby roads. Eight police officers were assigned to direct traffic.

An estimated 3,500 people attended the invitation-only party the day before and helped raise $50,000 for local charities. Eighteen thousand people attended the official opening the next day. Entertainment included a man in a deep-sea diving suit making bubbles, women serving appetizers from tables suspended from their middles and musicians in bird masks. Jim Belushi and his Sacred Hearts band played blues over the weekend to celebrate the opening.

Rivers Casino CEO Greg Carlin predicted that people would come back again and again. “We have that stage at Cube where we can book local bands and a piano in the cocktail lounge where we can have jazz trios or acoustic players—anything we want. People are afraid of the unknown, but once they see it they realize it’s a very positive experience,” he said, according to the Daily Herald.

The casino has 1,050 slot machines and 48 gaming tables. It also has five restaurants, including one called Hugo’s Frog Bar, a sports bar, nightclub with live music and a cocktail lounge.  The Rivers aims at young urban professionals, a group that casinos don’t always aspire to attract. The casino is owned by Chicago billionaire Neil Bluhm.

The 10th casino license has had a storied past. Originally the license, freed up by the failure of a casino boat in East Dubuque in 1997, was to go to the city of Rosemont. The Illinois Gaming Board voted in 2004 to give it to that city. However, soon the state attorney general raised suspicions about the casino’s investors and their possible ties to organized crime—along with that of colorful Rosemont Mayor Don Stevens—and the license was taken away, giving the opportunity to Des Plaines, which in 2008 won over competing plans in Waukegan and Rosemont (which was a finalist yet again). The developer, Midwest Gaming, wasn’t considered the best financed company, but it had a clean record, which appealed to the board members.

It was a 10-year wait—mandated by regulatory complications as well as politics—for real estate developer Bluhm, from the moment he first found the site of the casino until its opening. In the interim he opened a casino in Mississippi and two in Pennsylvania. He also hedged his bets by hanging onto a 22.5-acre site adjacent to Rosemont. As he put it, quoted by Melissa Harris’s Chicago Confidential: “We're long-term oriented with staying power. We just waited it out.”

It’s clear that the dining aspect of the casino is one of Bluhm’s pride and joys: “Look at that roast beef,” he said during opening day at the buffet. “Does that look good or am I imagining? You know sometimes you have a gambling exclusion, where you put your name on a list and they don't let you in. I'm putting myself on a buffet exclusion.”

The opening is bad news for its competitors, Penn National Gaming’s Hollywood Casino Aurora, which is about 40 miles away and the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, 23 miles away. The city of Elgin is bracing to lose an estimated $10 million to $16 million in tax revenues next year due to the expected loss in business.

 “It will hinder us from completing the amount of infrastructure we would like to. We won't be able to do as many roads. We're going to have to look at scaling back some of our projects.” Elgin CFO Colleen Lavery said, according to the Daily Herald.

The Hollywood Casino Aurora is expecting to see the number of visitors drop by as much as 30 percent, but Doug Lima, the casino’s vice president of marketing, feels that its emphasis on customer service will keep those numbers to a minimum. “We've built a solid base of customers. We hope they'll continue their regular trips to us.”

Arlington Park racetrack is also expecting to see revenues continue to decline, just as they have for the past 20 years. Like other racetracks in the state, Arlington Park has pinned its hopes for survival on a bill whose fate depends on Governor Pat Quinn.

According to Michael Togarelli, a city councilman of Collinsville, “The racing industry is not asking the taxpayers to subsidize them, as many other private businesses have nationwide. It is simply asking for the right to compete and survive in an open market. This is what the free enterprise system of our country was built on. The addition of slot machines at Fairmount would spur the possibility of a total rejuvenation of the area. It would generate new buildings, restaurants and jobs for the area. It would also spur economic development in the area that has otherwise been stagnant for years.”

Lawmakers are also waiting for Quinn to make a decision whether to sign or veto a bill that would add another five casinos to the ten that already operate, as well as allow racetracks to add slots, and two airports (Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway) to deploy the machines. Cities that would get the new licenses include Chicago, Danville, Rockford, Park City and an unnamed as yet Chicago suburb.

If the bill becomes law the addition of slot machines at racetracks would allow them to offer larger purses, which means better and more exciting races, which brings in more fans. Racinos have revitalized racing in other states, supporters say.

The governor has previously said that he thought the bill was too sizeable.

The chairman of the Illinois Gaming Board, Aaron Jaffe, said last week that he would be “flabbergasted” if Quinn signs the bill that Jaffe has previously characterized as “garbage.”

However, the governor was quick to respond that the chairman didn’t speak for him and that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose political clout may have been what got the bill passed to begin with, says he is confident Quinn will sign it.

“I believe that when the governor weighs it, and weighs all the equities and analyzes it, he’ll come to the conclusion I think I came to on behalf of the city of Chicago,” he said, according to GamblingCompliance.

Some observers of the state political scene speculate that the reason Quinn is taking so long to decide what to do about the bill is that he is uncomfortable with high level political negotiating, having been a political outsider for much of his career.

The Elgin city council last week voted to ask the governor not to sign the bill and further add to their misery by adding even more competition.

By Staff