Chicago’s Controversial $1.7 Billion Casino Project

[00:00:00]Chicago is building its first permanent casino, a roughly $1.7 billion riverfront resort on the site of an old newspaper printing plant.

[00:00:09]Bally's Chicago is being [music] asked to do a lot at once. Transform a closed-off industrial site into a public riverfront destination, create thousands of jobs, and generate new money for Chicago's severe budget shortfall, which is where the project gets complicated because the temporary casino has already fallen short of early revenue expectations.

[00:00:28]So, can this casino become the revenue machine the city desperately needs? I traveled to Chicago to try and learn more.

[00:00:36]Chicago's relationship with casino gambling has always been uneasy. For decades, city officials discussed a casino as a way to capture gambling money that was already leaving the city, especially to suburbs in Northwest Indiana. However, the idea repeatedly stalled because of politics. But, don't be fooled. The real issue was never just the morality of gambling. It was who would operate the casino, where would it go, how much revenue the city would receive, and whether the state's tax structure would leave enough profit for a private operator to build it.

[00:01:04]To give you an idea of how dire of a situation the city is in, Chicago faces a projected budget shortfall of $1.15 billion for the 2026 fiscal year. Leaders wanted casino revenue dedicated to the city's police and fire pension funds, which have become one of the largest pressures in the budget. In 2019, Illinois approved a major gambling expansion that included a Chicago casino license.

[00:01:28]The city needed a casino deal that private capital would actually finance.

[00:01:32]State lawmakers eventually adjusted the structure, and the city moved into a formal selection process. By 2022, Bally's was selected over competing proposals, which I'll explain in a minute. City Council approved the plan in a 41-7 vote, and the Illinois Gaming Board later issued the license. This allowed Bally's to operate a temporary casino and proceed toward a permanent complex. But, where would this be?

[00:01:55]The casino is being built on the former Chicago Tribune Freedom Center site, a large industrial parcel along the river near Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street.

[00:02:03]It's close to downtown, River North, Fulton Market, Goose Island, and the Kennedy Expressway. The Freedom Center was built for a different Chicago, one where downtown adjacent riverfront land could still be used for large-scale industrial and logistics operations.

[00:02:17]Today and into the future, it will be more about trying to lure in the public.

[00:02:22]But this site was not the only option.

[00:02:24]The city's casino process narrowed the competition to three finalists. [music] Bally's here, Hard Rock at the proposed One Central site near Soldier Field, and Rivers at the 78 in the South Loop. The Bally's site had a big advantage. It was a large, privately controlled riverfront parcel close to downtown without the same dependence on a speculative mega infrastructure platform like One Central. The 78 had its own redevelopment ideas, but it also faced neighborhood opposition and questions about whether a casino fit the original vision for that site. Oh, yeah, and it probably didn't hurt that Bally's agreed to pay the city $40 million up front plus $4 million annually.

[00:03:01]Demolition began in 2024 after Tribune operations left the site. Notably, in December of 2024, part of a wall collapsed during demolition and sent material into the Chicago River. Bally's identified the material as non-hazardous and cleanup crews removed debris from the river, but demolition was paused while the incident was reviewed. And in some ways, this was foreshadowing because it showed the risk of working on a parcel with public scrutiny on all sides.

[00:03:26]The permanent Bally's plan includes a 500-room hotel tower, a 3,000-seat theater, restaurants, cafes, a food hall, and VIP gaming areas. The gaming floor is planned for approximately 3,400 slots and 173 table games, while the hotel tower is planned at 34 stories with amenities such as a pool, spa, fitness center, sundeck, and rooftop restaurant and bar.

[00:03:48]Bally's had to revise the hotel portion after city officials determined that the original tower location could interfere with major city water infrastructure.

[00:03:56]That forced the redesign and briefly raised questions about whether the full 500 room hotel would be built in one phase. Bally's later announced a refreshed plan that restored the full tower into a single phase project, [music] placing the hotel tower on the southern end of the site near Ohio Street along the river.

[00:04:12]When I visited the site in late 2025, you can clearly see that vertical progress was well underway. In late April of 2026, they marked the structure topping off with a final beam placement accompanied by a ceremony. Bally's said more than 1,000 tradespeople had worked on the project by that milestone, and the company projects about 3,000 permanent jobs once the development opens. The current opening target is spring of 2027, having been delayed from what was originally estimated to be 2025.

[00:04:39]Now, let's talk about the project's impact on the city.

[00:04:43]One of the most broadly supported parts of this project is that it'll add public riverfront access, including the 2,000 foot Riverwalk extension and park space.

[00:04:51]The Freedom Center was historically closed off from ordinary public use. The new space will stretch down to the Chicago Avenue bridge area, where it'll meet up with a separate C dot project that should help tie the area into the broader riverfront network. As you can imagine, this project has been shrouded in controversy since its inception. The long-term expectation has been that the permanent casino could send roughly $200 million a year toward those pensions I mentioned earlier. Although that projection has become one of the most heavily scrutinized parts of the project. Bally's temporary site has over 800 slot machines and 56 table games, but it lacks the full package that'll be at the riverfront site. In 2025, with about 1.3 million visitors, it generated roughly $15 million in new gaming tax revenue for the city, which was far less than estimated, even for the temporary casino.

[00:05:39]The first concern is traffic impact. At night, on weekends, and around events, there could be thousands of people arriving or leaving in a short time, and this will affect the local network as well as access under the nearby Kennedy Expressway, which Chicago residents will tell you is already an experience of its own. To respond, Bally's has proposed roughly 30 traffic improvements, mostly focused on signals, pedestrian crossings, access points, and nearby intersections. These will help, but it's easy to understand why some people doubt the effectiveness of this.

[00:06:08]There are also broader neighborhood concerns, like crime, noise, lighting, parking spillover, and property values, all of which are common with casino projects of this scale.

[00:06:18]But what about financial controversy?

[00:06:20]Chicago selected Bally's in part because the casino was supposed to become that dedicated revenue source for the pension fund. But casino revenue is far from fixed. It moves with consumer spending, competition, tourism, online gambling, recessions, and market saturation. And we can clearly see that with the underperformance of the temporary casino. The concern is that Chicago has attached a serious public finance problem to a revenue source that is inherently variable. Bally's and Chicago originally promoted 25% minority and women ownership in the project. But in 2025, all parties involved were sued by plaintiffs who argued the investment criteria were discriminatory.

[00:06:56]And not to mention, the initial public offering fell far short of the original ambition. Bally's said it brought in nearly 1,800 shareholders, including just over 1,000 Chicagoans, but the public portion generated only about 5.5 million dollars from around 2,500 shares sold, far below the previously discussed 250 million dollar community investment target. Including private placements, the offering was valued at about 97 million. Now, Bally's faces another problem. In the city's 2026 budget, Chicago legalized video gaming terminals, slot-style and video poker machines in bars and restaurants with liquor licenses. Bally's opposes this because the entire project depends on concentrating everything in one destination. Video gaming does the opposite. It spreads gambling out. The city's risk is that a dollar spent at a neighborhood video gaming terminal may be less valuable than a dollar spent at the casino. Bally's warned that legal video gambling could cost Chicago roughly $70 million in annual tax revenue, threaten its $4 million annual host agreement payment, and reduce projected casino employment by around 1,000 jobs.

[00:08:01]Taking a step back from all the controversy, a useful comparison is MGM National Harbor outside Washington, D.C.

[00:08:08]It opened in 2016 as a $1.4 billion integrated casino with a hotel, restaurants, entertainment venues, and a large gaming floor. It became Maryland's top performing casino and generated just short of $70 million in gaming revenue in December of 2025 alone. And I'm not here to tell you that these two casino resorts are the same. There are vast and numerous differences. However, it does show why Chicago would want this and why they believe in the financial model.

[00:08:35]Because Chicago is betting that this one riverfront resort can become a steady revenue engine for a city with deep financial pressure. I didn't mention it earlier, but projections suggest that in a worst-case scenario, the city's annual budget shortfall could reach $2 billion by 2028, a risk many critics attribute to poor management. So, what do you think? Is this part of the solution or just another gamble? I'm Josh. This is Bill Coor. Thanks for watching.