* Jennifer Bailey at the Danville Commercial News…

D-Vegas has been a long-running nickname used by some residents for Danville, it being the opposite of a bright lights big city.

Now after a 30-year wait for a casino, Danville is living up to that nickname and could be called that by a lot more people. The casino renderings of Haven Gaming LLC’s casino resort and entertainment center is reminiscent of a Las Vegas-style property.

The Danville City Council voted 12-0, with Ward 4 Alderman Mike O’Kane absent and a vacant Ward 1 seat at the start of the meeting Tuesday night to accept the casino steering-committee’s recommendation of Haven Gaming as the casino operating partner. Haven Gaming is a team of about seven people with more than a century of gaming experience combined with casinos, for example in Joliet, Michigan City, Ind., and in California.

The proposed casino will have 1,250 slot machines, 40 gaming tables and also sports betting lounges and bars, a 2,500 seat entertainment venue, conference/banquet center, 300-seat buffet, a boutique hotel and rooftop spa/salon, pool and lazy river, celebrity-style restaurants and other amenities. There also will be waterfall and other outside features.

* Artist rendering…

Nice.

* Sun-Times…

“This has been a long time coming,” a tearful Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said before the City Council unanimously passed a measure approving a proposal from a politically connected casino development group that includes a powerful ex-state lawmaker who resigned in controversy earlier this year.

Nearly 25 years after the General Motors foundry shut down in nearby Tilton, the once-prospering city of Danville — where Abraham Lincoln practiced law before his political ascent, and where actors Dick Van Dyke and Gene Hackman grew up — has seen its number of residents shrink to about 30,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. That’s a population decline of about 30% from its heyday in 1970.

And now, more than 30% of Danville residents live below the federal poverty line, more than double the statewide poverty rate of about 12%, Census figures show.

But state and city leaders are betting a casino can help turn that tide, despite the fact casino attendance and revenue figures have been steadily declining for years as video gambling machines have proliferated at at thousands of bars, restaurants, lounges and rest stops since they launched in Illinois in 2012.

       

24 Comments - Just Me 2 - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:22 am: I worry the casino is just going to prey on local residents who apparently don’t have a lot of money to lose. Not including Champagne/Urbana the next closest major city is Lafayette and is over an hour away. - bogey golfer - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:25 am: What is the market area this hotel/casino will draw from? Between, existing casinos, mom and pop slots, queen of heart raffles, have we reached saturation point? - Responsa - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:26 am: I fear this venture is too ambitious, too big and is not going to have a happy ending. Hoping for the best, though. - Chad Hays - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:29 am: This has been a long time coming for our community. Thrilled that investors are proposing a Tier 1 destination entertainment venue. The convention space alone is most welcome and sorely needed. The upfront investment in the community in addition to the facilities is awesome. $1 million for a new addition to the Danville Boy’s & Girls Club, $1 million to help redevelop Danville’s Downtown Riverfront, and significant annual investments in scholarships for Danville Area Community College, the beautiful recently refurbished Fischer Theatre, Vermilion Advantage, Danville Police and Fire etc. This in addition to Carle Foundation announcing a $50 million investment to redevelop the west side of downtown for a new medical campus. It has been a spectacularly good last six weeks for Danville! - Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:34 am: Hoping this works out, and recreational marijuana too (Danville recently voted to tax it). - Chad Hays - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:38 am: Most of the garbage in the Sun Times article is from 30 years ago. The good news? The last time I saw a Sun Times in Danville was at the bottom of a bird cage. - City Zen - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:48 am: ==I worry the casino is just going to prey on local residents who apparently don’t have a lot of money to lose== No, it’s going to prey on Indiana residents who apparently don’t have a lot of money to lose. - Pundent - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:56 am: =Between, existing casinos, mom and pop slots, queen of heart raffles, have we reached saturation point?= Vegas thrives because it is a destination point. You have multiple venues with any number of entertainment options and restaurants. A single standalone casino in Danville will not create a compelling reason for out of towners to make the trip. And with the proliferation of video gaming it’s pretty easy for locals to get their fix at the local bar. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think that this is going be the answer to Danville’s woes. - City Zen - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:57 am: ==“It will be like a resort area,” Williams said of the casino site being at Southgate, south of Interstate 74 at Lynch Road.== Interesting this is going on the outskirts of Danville rather than closer to downtown. - Curious George - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 10:59 am: Lou Lang - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:02 am: ===Interesting this is going on the outskirts=== Casinos are money sucks. They don’t generally help a small city’s downtown. Just the opposite. Best to put them where the out of towners can get to them as easily as possible, and that’s the thinking in Danville and Rockford so far. - SSL - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:12 am: I’m not much of a gambler these days. Used to make trips to Vegas every few years as a much younger person, but it never lived up to the hype. Most casinos were full of senior citizens pumping social security money into one armed bandits. That’s a heck of a building they plan to build and I wish them good luck with it. If it fails it will be one heck of an eyesore. There’s a lot riding on it for them. - JS Mill - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:16 am: Pundent is spot on. This will not be what they want it to be in Danville. - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:18 am: ===I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think that this is going be the answer to Danville’s woes. === No one thing could ever be “the” answer to Danville’s problems. It’s one of many. When you demand that something must be an absolute panacea, you are not living in the real world. - Thomas Paine - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:19 am: They will be advertising heavily in Indianapolis which is only 90 minutes away and has 2 million people. The place will be packed every weekend. - Thomas Paine - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:23 am: Also, I could not figure out which ex-lawmaker they were talking about. Lang did not “resign in controversy” earlier this year. he was exonerated by the Inspector General before he retired, tarnished his reputation for sure but he left with his head held high. - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:29 am: ===but he left with his head held high=== Some reporters insist on cramming as much negativity as they can into their stories regardless of the facts. - Pundent - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 11:46 am: =When you demand that something must be an absolute panacea, you are not living in the real world.= Couldn’t agree more. What’s disappointing is the “30 year wait.” It says to me that this is being viewed as a panacea and an excuse for not coming up with any other economic alternatives by the teary-eyed mayor and others. - Ambrose Chase - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 12:09 pm: Kind of looks like the (former) Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. - Chad Hays - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 12:49 pm: =Pundent= Are you just sour on this announcement or on good news for Danville generally? The nearly 30 year wait comment is in reference to the first gaming life fee being issued in 1991 - 29 years ago. Simple math. That you would associate that with lack of a plan, effort, et. al. is a ridiculous leap of logic and underscores how little you know about the wonderful people here and the heroic efforts over many years to completely reinvent and rebuild an entire economy. . . . . it is more than a little insulting. I LIKE that the Mayor cares enough about his city to be emotional when good news is announced. He was emotional when Carle announced their $50 million investment a few weeks ago. He will almost certainly be emotional when ground is broken on the million expansion of our Boys and Girls Club - an organization that he personally ran when the current facility was built. Too many have worked too hard for too long on multiple fronts to allow low information nay sayers to rain on our parade. Take your cloudy weather elsewhere. Sometimes “congratulations and best of luck” is all that is required. We appreciate the positive thoughts of the huge majority that are rooting for our community and Illinois in general. - Downstate - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 1:43 pm: I look at the promise that the casinos supposedly offered Alton, Metropolis and E. St. Louis. It seems that none of those casinos lifted the economic prosperity of their particular region. - Unstable Genius - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 3:49 pm: Not sure why someone in Indianapolis would drive an hour and a half to Danville when there are two casinos in Indiana less than an hour away. - Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 4:19 pm: “No, it’s going to prey on Indiana residents who apparently don’t have a lot of money to lose.” True dat on Indiana residents not having a lot of money to lose. Their median incomes rank toward the bottom of all states. Rooting for the casinos to succeed. We just had a governor who trashed the state. - Pundent - Wednesday, Oct 2, 19 @ 4:47 pm: @Chad Hays - I harbor no grudge or resentment against Danville. I wish them well. But as Downstate points out the track record of casinos reviving areas that have struggled economically is poor. Waiting 30 years for a license suggests that Danville is pinning too many of its hopes on this solution. 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