After what seems like an eternity, Lori Lightfoot the current Mayor of Chicago has finally announced her five proposed locations for the largest ever casino to be built in Chicago, and what will now follow is a public consultation period in which local residents can have their say on whether they want that new casino to be built near them or not.
Both an economic impact and feasibility study and report will also be required on each of the five possible locations too, but it isn’t going to be too long now before one of them is selected to be the location at which that casino will be built.
What does, however, make the choice of location important, is that it is going to be the largest casino in the state, and one that will have 4000 gaming machines or every possible description and a huge number of gaming tables too, and a percentage of the revenue raised from that casino will funnelled into both the police and fire departments.
As for which locations have been selected by the Mayor, they are the former Michael Reese hospital site, Pershing Road and State Street over in Bronzeville, Harbourside at 111th and Bishop Ford Freeway, Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue, the old location of the U.S Steel Works at 80th and Lake Shore Drive.
It will be the local council that will ultimately have the final say as to where the new casino will be built, but one thing is for certain, they are going to receive both favourable and not so favourable feedback from local residents, as the new casino proposals have divided opinions of local residents, with some all for it and the jobs that will be formed and those who are against a new casino for various other reasons.