Casinos are inherenly anti-urban and require blank walls, large floorplates, no windows or natural light, no clocks or obvious time-indicators, and no outside distractions. It would be best to put the casino as far from downtown as possible, with the primary objective recovering present losses from Indiana.

Vegas, Reno, New Orleans, Atlantic City, Miami, Bangkok, Macau, and San Jose would all disagree with you there. Once you are inside the building they want to turn you into a money spending zombie that would prefer to be inside their casino than elsewhere, hence why they have restaurants, hotels, shopping literally built into large casinos now. But the urban environment brings people in droves. The thing I will agree with you on is the large floorplate is not something I'm a fan of, as I prefer really tall buildings over short beefy buildings, but it still gets a pretty dense amount of people in there. The walls could be whatever they want it to be. Vegas does some interesting things with some of their casino designs. Hell Miami has straight up neon decorated art deco casinos that are really cool.

seems like this is all lip service and it goes at mccormick

seems like this is all lip service and it goes at McCormick



Agreed

Nothing creates a classy environment like a bunch of baseball fans rolling in wearing jerseys and caps.

If it’s in a South Side neighborhood more than 10 minutes’ taxi south of McCormick Place, then no one will go except locals to squander their paychecks. Plain and simple.

Do you think the Vegas Strip is “urban”?

Of the cities on your list where I've seen the casinos (Vegas, Reno, NoLa, AC, Miami), in every case the casinos detract from the urban sphere, and really all these cities have pretty terrible urbanity except for a few blocks of Miami Beach and NoLa. I doubt there's a city on the planet where a casino is a net positive for urbanity. Possibly Monte Carlo, but that's more a civic building/theater that happens to have a casino space, and not really relevant to modern casino-building.

Also, I'd be really surprised if it went near McCormick Place/Museum Campus. Nothing says kids trip downtown like a visit to the aquarium, Field Museum, oh, and a slots emporium. And someone who attends conferences monthly, I've never heard of colleagues visiting local casinos (plus there's barely any time; if you have a moment from working/networking you nap or catch up on emails).

And, unless you're Vegas or Macao, a casino isn't really a visitors attraction; it's for locals. Casinos are everywhere these days.

It doesn’t matter if it is classy. It just needs to make money, and preferably out of town money.

I’m not thinking James Bond when I think of this casino. I’m thinking of the fat dude with a goatee who spends $900 on Blackjack

Yes. Do you think it's "suburban", "rural"?

The way I see it is casinos don't "detract" from urbanity, they simply absorb a lot of people like a sponge and add more diverse options for entertainment. I'm not sure how you feel those cities you picked have "terrible urbanity" and that this "terrible urbanity" is directly related to them having casinos. I'd say larger roads over time to accomodate for vehicles is what have detracted the most from the urbanity of those cities, but for their size they are pretty urban.

Give up on “classy”. This ain’t London or Monaco. The American gaming industry is just fundamentally unable to deliver classy - at best they deliver a gaudy spectacle that is precisely targeted at wowing “baseball fans in caps and jerseys”. The most recent attempt at this is Steve Wynn’s casino in Boston, that’s his idea of “classy”.

The best you can hope for is balancing appeal to tourists and longtime gamblers, and the Near South Side does that. Sox Park is only five minutes from McCormick Place by cab or Uber, there’s an expressway directly connecting the two. Plus it’s right on top of the Chinese community that heavily patronizes the Indiana casinos currently.

Everything he thinks about has to be aimed at the upper-class.

I've been to casinos in the middle of Mississippi rice fields to Vegas to the MGM in DC. I prefer the cheaper versions of casinos. MGM has like 50 dollar mins on their tables during off-peak times. Now, on Roulette I spend way more than that on one spin, but its the point.

Casinos are like bike lanes. It equally causes people to freak out. I won't dismiss people's concerns, of course, but I think they are overblown.

The only place this makes sense is in the McCormick Place Lakeside Center. . . the building is already there. . . the transit access, parking hotels and other amenities serving McCormick Place already exist. . . it's sequestered from the rest of the city so that there won't be any spillover negatively impacting the rest of the city. . . seems like a no-brainer to me. . .

. . .

^ Nah, that's way too good of an idea for it ever to happen

I too have been to lots of casinos all over the country from the Vegas strip to podunk towns. They are definitely NOT a plus for the surrounding area in terms of urbanity and walkability, and they are definitely not classy either. Vegas overcomes that somewhat, but only because of sheer scale and flash. Atlantic City is nowhere close.

I filled out the survey (just once, like the naive innocent I am) on the premise that the casino will be bad for the walkability around it. I say, stick it in a place that will suck up tourists and is accessible on transit for workers, but is away from a neighborhood that could do better than a blank-walled fortress. McCormick sounds good to me.

Anybody a fan of putting it in Rosemont? Might be a good fit there. McCormick is obviously a good downtown location.

There's already a casino in Rosemont (I think; I vaguely recall one near my airport hotel). And Rosemont is a separate city.

Sequestered from the rest of the city is exactly what I DON'T want to see. A couple weeks ago, Ed Zotti had a great article in the SunTimes explaining this.

Zotti says that Chicago should follow the London model. Here's a picture of what the "London model" looks like: London Hippodrome

He also says that the Thompson Center "might make a good casino — perhaps a spectacular one." I agree.

I also think the block surrounded by Illinois, Rush, Hubbard and Wabash would make a fantastic site. I'd tear down the Realtor's building and widen the Plaza of the Americas (but leave 444 No Michigan). The main pedestrian entrance to the casino would be on the east side, facing the Tribune Tower. With hotel and residential above the casino, this would be a very large project; i.e., easily more than $1 billion. I could go on but I'm getting into fantasy land.

And how exactly would the City of Chicago benefit from a Casino in Rosemont?

I think Lakeside Center is a terrible idea - there wouldn't be a hotel component attached to LC, which any Casino Operator would most definitely require, and any operator will want flashy signage, ala Vegas or AC, something LC would not allow, or if it did, would look god awful on the lakefront.

My money is on some sort of development that resembles Encore in Boston.