A coalition of business, labor and civic leaders is floating a proposal for a downtown casino that would anchor a newly created entertainment district, just months after Gov. Rod Blagojevich gave a thumbs-down to the idea of a casino in the city center.
The presence of a land-based casino with 3,000-plus positions for gamblers would act as an economic development engine, the coalition argues, drawing greater numbers of tourists and business travelers to the city center and its theaters, restaurants and museums.
“It’s an economic stimulus package,” said Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which is making the proposal in conjunction with the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau.
In its early stages, the proposal will be a hard sell in Springfield, where it will be floated in the November veto session. Republicans have opposed publicly owned casinos, and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, last spring shot down Mayor Richard Daley’s push for a city-owned casino.
“We need to sell them,” acknowledged Jerry Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. The coalition will spend the coming weeks meeting with key legislators and finding a lawmaker to sponsor the legislation.
Daley “wholeheartedly supports the idea of gaming in the city because it provides jobs and economic development at a time when those things are sorely needed,” said Jacquelyn Heard, Daley’s press secretary, but she said she could not comment specifically on the entertainment district proposal.
The coalition has not yet met with Blagojevich, but it is encouraged by his recent comments to newspaper editorial boards indicating greater openness to the expansion of casino gambling, Roper said.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the governor declined to rule out the possibility that the governor would get behind the plan, saying he hasn’t had a chance yet to review it.
Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff also dropped hints that the governor might be willing to support some casino in the city, if not necessarily the giant downtown casino envisioned by the new proposal.
“The two most important things are that new gaming is not used as an excuse not to deal with tough fiscal decisions that the state needs to make,” she said. “Secondly, any new proposal must live up to the original intent of the law, and that is to provide economic development in areas that need it.”
Under the proposal, the casino would be jointly owned by the city and state, with the city getting one-third of the revenue generated and the state getting two-thirds. The coalition estimates it would generate $250 million to $300 million a year for the city and $600 million to $700 million for the state.
The coalition says the casino would act as an economic catalyst, bringing $1 billion in new spending into downtown annually and leading to the creation of 11,000 new jobs.
The casino will make the city more competitive in bids for meeting and convention business, Gannon said.
“If conventions are leaving because they believe they don’t have the ability to gamble in the city of Chicago, we want to take that equation off the board and make sure there is a level playing field,” he said.
Roper said seven of the top 10 convention cities in America have gambling.
“One only need look at Montreal, Monte Carlo, Vienna, Amsterdam,” Roper said. “All these cities successfully integrated casino gaming into city centers … they didn’t let them dominate, like in Vegas.”
The coalition has not yet identified a site for the casino, but it would anchor a so-called entertainment district.
The designation of such an area–bordered by North Avenue on the north, Roosevelt Road on the south, the lake on the east and the Kennedy Expressway on the west–would serve primarily as a way to package what’s already here and sell it to the outside world.
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“We’re trying to wake people up,” said Gannon.
At least one casino expert says it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that casinos act as economic engines. That has not been the experience in cities such as New Orleans and St. Louis, said Bill Eadington, professor of economics at the University of Nevada at Reno.
Many factors come into play, including the site and the quality of the management team, he said. “You would want to do a study to try to balance out the positive and negative impact issues,” he said.
Potential problems could include involvement by organized crime, the presence of loan sharks in the vicinity and the possibility for a rise in petty theft, Eadington said.
The fall legislative veto session is still two months, and one Election Day, away.
Such post-election fall sessions have been used to approve controversial proposals, ranging from approval of creation of off-track betting parlors and rebuilding of Soldier Field to raising legislative pay.
But a successful gambling proposal would likely need to include plans for expanded gambling elsewhere in the state, such as those previously suggested for Rockford, Waukegan and the southern suburbs, as well as more gaming positions at current boats and slot machines at racetracks. The risk is that the proposal becomes so big that it will die of its own weight.
One potentially strong ally for the plan could be Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), who has long supported the idea of a casino in the south suburbs to help buoy faltering communities there. A spokeswoman for Jones said Thursday that he hasn’t reviewed the newest plan, but said he had previously pledged to push for a casino package in the fall session.
Sen. Denny Jacobs (D-East Moline), the father of the state’s riverboat gambling law, said he planned to meet with Daley Thursday to find out “exactly what he had to have in the plan.”
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Latest plan floated for land-based casino
Proposal: a publicly-owned, land-based casino development that would help make Chicago a rival convention destination to such cities as Las Vegas, New York and Orlando.
Where: Downtown, but exact location not decided.
Hurdles: Changing state law to allow a land-based casino.