Chicago aldermen were frustrated Wednesday at a lack of answers as they sharply questioned and criticized top representatives of the Bally’s Chicago casino amid a construction slowdown on the $1.7 billion River West project.
City Council members probed the embattled company’s finances and grilled executives over the early-August decision to pause building a hotel and nearly all other non-gambling amenities at the site.
But critics of the pause complained they couldn’t get straight information from casino leaders or Mayor Brandon Johnson’s top deputies during the License and Consumer Protection Committee meeting.
“We’re getting stonewalled top to bottom,” said downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, who accused Johnson of failing to enforce the city’s contract with Bally’s to maintain construction. “We’re allowing folks to play games with union jobs, people’s livelihoods and, honestly, our police and fire pensions, which require this casino to be incredibly successful.”
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And committee Chair Ald. Debra Silverstein said it was “very disappointing, very embarrassing, very insulting, any adjective you can think of, that we don’t have representation from the mayor’s office here today to answer our questions.”
Bally’s has faced underwhelming returns at its Medinah Temple temporary casino downtown, recently left some construction contractors unpaid and saw its chief financial officer resign last week. Aldermen asserted those developments signal Bally’s has only slowed construction because it isn’t financially stable enough to finish the project.
Still, in the sort of tense meeting that has become a staple inside a deeply divided City Hall, top Bally’s officials maintained they still have the money to build. They offered their own reason for why construction has stalled: aldermen themselves.
The decision by Johnson opponents to legalize slot machine-like video gambling terminals across Chicago has sharply shifted the company’s initial financial assumptions on the project, because Chicagoans will now stay in their neighborhoods to gamble instead of spending money at the new casino, they argued.
“As a result of that, we’re re-evaluating everything outside of the (initial agreement with the city) to determine whether it’s fiscally responsible for us as a public company to continue to invest at that level without the type of return that we would expect,” said George Papanier, the company’s president and interim CFO.
But many aldermen, including several of Johnson’s most vocal opponents, refused to buy the reasoning.
“We all know that you were struggling to cobble together money. We all know you have an incredible debt load, and you’re trying to blame all of this on one policy concern,” Reilly said after a barrage of questions about the company’s finances.
As the pressure mounted during the all-afternoon hearing, Bally’s leaders maintained their construction changes are allowed under the agreement reached by the company in 2022 with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.
“The host community agreement does allow for a phased development of this project, and so the actions that Bally’s took with respect to rephasing this project are in complete alignment and compliance,” said Kim Barker, Bally’s top lawyer and executive vice president. “Bally’s maintains capital resources to continue to build and deliver on the obligations of the HCA. This has not changed.”
Barker further alleged the city’s legalization of video gambling machines not only shattered the economic underpinnings of the development, but also violated the city’s agreement. Still, the company proceeded Tuesday with a $4 million payment it agreed in the deal to make toward the city’s police and fire pensions, she said.
Aldermen asked throughout the meeting why top mayoral deputy Jason Lee wasn’t on hand to detail the Johnson administration’s handling of the situation, even as they pressed Johnson’s newly appointed CFO, Ashley Gabrysch, about the situation.
Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, went so far as to request Lee be summoned from his office to City Council chambers to answer questions.
“(Lee is) making policy decisions on behalf of taxpayers of the city, and has mismanaged this entire project over the last several weeks,” Waguespack said. “I think it behooves him to come down and answer the questions that all of our colleagues might have on this.”
Waguespack’s request went unmet.
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Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, took a more neutral position on the feud between aldermen and casino throughout the meeting, but nonetheless said it is “clear that the administration isn’t sharing information.”
“I think for the general public, if you’re a Chicagoan, it should be pretty embarrassing what you’re watching here,” he said. “Everything that’s happening here … leads to less confidence into the city government itself and to Bally’s delivering on what they say they’re going to do.”
Some council members also argued that the broad prevalence across the city of so-called sweepstakes machines — video gambling-like machines that operate in a legally gray area by using noncash payouts, such as gift cards — proved the casino was always slated to face competition from neighborhood-based gambling offerings.
Their stances were echoed Wednesday morning by allies of the Illinois Restaurant Association. The organization’s president, Sam Toia, called on Johnson’s administration to process applications for video gambling terminals submitted by dozens of restaurants and bars.
“Let’s help our small, independent, family-owned restaurants and bars throughout our 77 communities. They’re all businesspeople, and they’re hurting,” he said. “The administration is basically stonewalling to try to help big business — let me back up: failing big business, with companies like Bally’s.”
But while Toia and a vocal majority of aldermen present at the no-vote hearing lashed out at the company and the mayor, some agreed with Bally’s that the ongoing construction slowdown was sparked by the council itself.
Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett, 27th, pointed to the last-second decision by aldermen to include video gambling machine legalization in the 2026 budget passed in December against Johnson’s will. Burnett, whose ward includes the casino, called it “reasonable” for Bally’s to reshuffle construction amid a potential flood of new video gambling machines.
“It is a situation that we created. We had an agreement, and we’re reneging our agreement,” he said. “If you really want to point fingers, we are as responsible as anyone in this situation.”