Rick Heidner, owner of Gold Rush Gaming and a partner of a scrapped senior-housing development plan in Tinley Park, has applied to bring horse racing to the Illinois village next year according to local reports.
Playing in the Park LLC has applied with the Illinois Racing Board to offer harness racing three nights a week on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays in December 2020 on the site of the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center.
Heidner and Timothy Carey, the general manager of Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney, are listed as officers.
Heidner is a real estate developer and also is an owner of Gold Rush Gaming. He was a partner of Melody Square LLC, which proposed building an age-restricted community on the site, but later scrapped those plans in favor of the racino plan.
In June, Illinois adopted gambling expansion legislation that permits the south suburbs of Chicago to build one casino and one “racino,” or combination horse racing track and casino.
Tinley Park emerged as a front-runner for a racino because of its available land and due to already being the home of a Convention Center and Hollywood Casino Amphitheater. Early plans call for a 4,000-seat grandstand and a ⅞-mile track, as well as gambling facilities.
Tinley Park officials have also been amending zoning ordinances that permit office and restricted industrial uses for the land at 183rd Street and Harlem Avenue to include racing and entertainment. Two firms, Innovation Group and Convergence Strategy Group, have also been hired to conduct market, feasibility and economic-impact studies.
Before the municipality can buy the land from the state, however, it must conduct an updated environmental assessment. The last report, from 2014, showed that the land is contaminated and needs remediation. Estimates put the cost of cleanup at about $12 million.
