Tall & Urban News

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has picked a winning casino for the City of Chicago: It's Bally's, which will get the right to build and operate the potentially lucrative gambling complex. Bally's plans a casino on the Chicago Tribune printing plant site along the Chicago River between Chicago and Grand avenues, if the City Council and the Illinois Gaming Board ratify her choice.

In the last week, Bally’s upped their upfront payment offer from US$25 million to $40 million to help seal the deal. Bally's was the only one of the three finalists to include the payment in their initial offer to the city. Sources told Crain’s Lightfoot sought a hefty payment from each of the operators in final negotiations, potentially as high as $75 million, but the other two bidders did not match the $40 million offered by Bally’s.

As part of the deal, Bally’s will also pay US$4 million in annual payments while the full casino site is under development. The Tribune site is the sole location; there will be no gambling sites at Chicago's airports. And while Bally's site is being built, the operator plans to run a temporary casino at the former Medinah Temple at 600 N. Wabash Ave. Bally’s also secured support from local labor groups on a project labor agreement, a prerequisite to securing City Council support and final write off from the Illinois Gaming Board.

At a hearing in April, Chicago Federation of Labor president Bob Reiter said none of the casino bidders had negotiated an agreement, lighting a fire under aldermen who said they wouldn’t consider a deal until labor groups signed off. The deal now shifts to the City Council, where the special casino committee will hammer out the particulars of the site's zoning, licensing and building permits. The plan will need a majority of the 34-member special committee to be advanced to the full council.

For more on this story, go to Crain's.