The city of Waukegan’s decades-long struggle to bring a casino to town might finally be bearing fruit.
A casino license for the north suburban community was one of six included across the state in a wide-ranging gambling expansion package approved by the General Assembly in its final days of its spring session and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in June.
The bill’s passage kicked off a four-month process where would-be developers made their pitches to city officials and residents, through hefty proposals, public presentations and, in some cases, an online marketing campaign.
Of the six proposals originally submitted, three are now being reviewed by Illlinois Gambling Board staff.
They include:
A proposed expansion of the Rivers Casino brand that would eventually accommodate 2,000 gaming positions and feature an upscale gastropub called Luxbar, pitched as a “major traffic driver” for the project because it would be the first Gibsons Restaurant Group location in Lake County. The plan would be to draw customers from beyond Waukegan and its surrounding areas, using Rivers Casino Des Plaines’ brand and its high-end customer database.
Submitted by Full House Resorts, the proposed American Place would include a casino with 1,500 slot machines and 60 table games, including blackjack, roulette and three-card poker, as well as a sports betting area, all situated in a casual dining setting that would feature a video wall capable of displaying dozens of events simultaneously, like during March Madness or a single event like the Super Bowl, in ultra-high definition.
Proposed by Warner Gaming and Tap Room Gaming Chief Executive Officer Michael Bond — a former state senator whose company donated heavily to recent Waukegan election campaigns — North Point Casino would include the casino itself, a 5,300-square-foot sports betting operation, a two-acre outdoor amphitheater and a variety of restaurants in its first phase. Subsequent phases could include the expansion of the casino and addition of a hotel, a conference center and a retail entertainment district.
Despite repeated claims that it was required to submit multiple proposals to the state, the city of Waukegan was the only community to do so.
Mayor Sam Cunningham had pointed to that approach as one of the reasons residents didn’t need to worry about any developer — in particular Bond, whose organizations had donated to Cunningham’s mayoral campaign and the campaigns of four sitting aldermen — getting any special treatment.
The state now has until Oct. 28, 2020, to “process, vet, investigate, and make a licensing determination” about which of the three applications will be awarded the Waukegan license, said Joe Miller, the Illinois Gaming Board’s director of policy and special projects. If the Illinois Gaming Board doesn’t meet that deadline, it has to submit a written explanation to the applicants explaining why it hasn’t and when it expects to issue the license.
How long the due diligence takes depends on whether the developers are already licensed with the state and how well they put together their application, said Gene O’Shea, a spokesman for the Illinois Gaming Board and the director of its self-exclusion program for problem gamblers. The investigations can take longer if the applications, for example, are incomplete and staff needs to request more information.
The Illinois Gaming Board does not comment on where it is on assessing pending applications, Miller said. The final decisions approving or denying applications will be made a public board meetings.
The Waukegan City Council will still have some work to do once that occurs, including hammering out a development agreement with the winning developer.
That agreement would incorporate the sale or lease of the city-owned acreage at the Fountain Square shopping district, city attorney Bob Long said. Selling the land will require seven yes votes from the Waukegan City Council, which is made up of nine aldermen plus the mayor, who only votes to break ties.
A lease requires just a simple majority if it is less than 20 years in length, though Long said there are some other exceptions to that could lead to a seven-vote majority being required.
A lawsuit filed by another would-be developer, Waukegan Potawatomi Casino, LLC, is also still pending.
Potawatomi’s lawsuit argues that a report prepared by consultant hired by the city contained inaccurate information and used a flawed process to rank the development proposals, and that the city violated the Open Meetings Act by not allowing public comment at the special meeting where it voted on the proposals.
Potawatomi is seeking to have the three certificates approved by the Waukegan City Council invalidated and to have the city start its selection process over, spokesman George Ermert has said.
