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Casino roundup and a semantics nitpick

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Illinois

It’s now a full house looking to land a south suburban casino jackpot.

Officials from Calumet City and Crestwood announced proposals Thursday for the new suburban gambling den authorized under Illinois’ massive gaming expansion, bringing the number of competing bids to five.

* Sun-Times…

Four remaining developers are jockeying for position as Waukegan city officials prepare to lay their chips behind preferred proposals for the north suburb’s long-sought Lake County casino.

With aldermen in Waukegan poised to vote Thursday on advancing at least one of those bids to the Illinois Gaming Board for final consideration, an independent consultant’s ranking of the competing plans has two major casino developers up in arms ahead of the crucial city council decision. […]

In third, Johnson Consulting ranked the venture by Churchill Downs Inc. and Rush Street Gaming, the group that already runs Illinois’ most lucrative gambling den: Rivers Casino in Des Plaines.

* Sun-Times…

The Waukegan City Council on Thursday decided against betting the pot on a single choice for the long sought Lake County casino, instead sending the competing applications of three developers to state regulators and rejecting a fourth.

The aldermen voted 6 to 3 to send the proposals from Full House Resorts and North Point Casino to the Illinois Gaming Board for consideration. North Point is led by former Grayslake state Sen. Michael Bond, who recently used his video gambling firm Tap Room Gaming to spend thousands of dollars on Waukegan elections.

Officials also voted 5 to 4 to advance the Rivers Casino Waukegan bid from Chicago casino magnate Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming and the Louisville-based corporate gambling Giant Churchill Downs Inc. They already own the most lucrative gambling den in the state, Rivers Casino in Des Plaines.

* Sun-Times…

Up in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is scrambling to salvage plans for a megacasino.

North and south of Illinois’ big-city economic engine, a host of developers are fighting to claim gambling dens in coveted suburban markets.

And all the while, a small-town vineyard owner 300 miles south of Chicago quietly has been powering forward with her long-held vision for a new Downstate casino.

Tucked into one sentence of the state’s massive gambling expansion law is a new casino license for the “unincorporated area of Williamson County adjacent to the Big Muddy River” — a narrow stretch of land already home to the winery Walker’s Bluff.

* Definition of “gambling den” from MacMillan Dictionary…

a place where people gamble illegally

* Example sentences containing ‘gambling den’ from Collins Dictionary…

He eventually rejoined his father, who was working in a gambling den. Times, Sunday Times (2017)

Or that dodgy fellow who runs an illicit gambling den?
Times, Sunday Times (2008)

Officials said that they had received a tip-off that the apartment was used as a gambling den.
Times, Sunday Times (2016)

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Oct 21, 19 @ 1:11 pm

Comments

The puritan journalists have always been punny.

Comment by Kentucky Bluegrass x Featherbed Bent x Northern California Sinsemilla Monday, Oct 21, 19 @ 1:39 pm
Also, “den” sounds small, dark and intimate.
The opposite of a casino.

Comment by Da Big Bad Wolf Monday, Oct 21, 19 @ 5:51 pm
Congrats to the owners of Walker’s Bluff for having legislation written specifically for them to be the landowners for a multimillion dollar casino site. Unless I’m missing the point?

Wonder if any other landowner in Southern Illinois was given the opportunity to get a casino on their property? Why was this downstate license restricted only to this parcel of land, when every other license in geographic locations are going through bidding process and everything else?

Comment by Frank Talks Monday, Oct 21, 19 @ 6:17 pm