Once adamant against full-service restaurants having video gambling machines in Buffalo Grove, Village Board members now welcome it, and the move has at least a few restaurant managers interested in adding the machines.
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During their meeting April 18, village trustees reversed a seven-year ban on video gaming machines created by a previous board in 2009. Several nearby suburbs, including neighboring Long Grove, have permitted video gaming within their own borders, and the decision to allow gambling activity has become a tool for those municipalities to attract new businesses, said community development director Chris Stilling.
“We want to look at it as an opportunity to capture full-service restaurants,” he said.
Video gambling machines look and work like slot machines. The player places a bet and uses buttons to start the game, then waits to see the result. Much like a regular video game system geared toward children, one machine can place dozens of different images, music and sound effects through its screen and speakers, offering all kinds of games for users.
Illinois legalized video gambling in 2009, but the regulations and permitting process for it took months to set up. Once state officials solidified the system, individual municipalities were allowed to decide whether to allow the activity within their communities. Long Grove board members experimented with it in 2014, extended the trial run a few times and voted Dec. 8 to open the village to video gaming permanently.
In Lake County alone, 23 of 47 municipalities tracked by the Illinois Gaming Board allow restaurants to have video gaming machines, according to data collected by the agency.
As with Long Grove, a restaurant in Buffalo Grove is eligible for video gaming machines if it is a full-service, sit-down establishment with a liquor license for on-site consumption. Stilling said restaurants that do apply in Buffalo Grove will have to show that the majority of their revenue will come from food sales. Under the state video gaming law, eligible businesses can have no more than five machines.
The intent with reversing the local ban, he said, is solely to add another experience a customer can have at a sit-down restaurant that wants to place video-gaming screens near regular flat-screen TVs. Stilling said Buffalo Grove is not looking to attract another Adam’s Roadhouse, a business on Milwaukee Avenue that offered video gaming by only selling prepackaged food before it went out of business in 2012.
In Illinois, the revenue generated from video gaming machines is distributed between multiple parties, with 5 percent of revenue going toward a municipality, 25 percent going to the state, less than a percent for system monitoring, and the rest is split between the business and machine operator.
At the recently opened Countyline Tavern along Lake Cook Road in Buffalo Grove, district manager Tod Barber said the day after the board’s vote that he had not heard video gambling was a possibility, but he said the machines might fit well with his craft beers and foodie-pub menu.
“I will be looking into that,” Barber said.
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