EDITORIAL: Five aldermen should lead the way in deciding where to build a Chicago casino

Share All sharing options for: EDITORIAL: Five aldermen should lead the way in deciding where to build a Chicago casino

A casino near the Harborside golf center on the Southeast Side?

The alderman is all in.

A casino on the site of the old Michael Reese Hospital?

The alderman won’t even play this hand.

A casino on the West Side?

The alderman wants to see a few more cards.

A casino right downtown?

The alderman wasn’t dealt into the game.

Editorials

If ever there were a job for a Chicago alderman, this is it. Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday proposed five possible sites for a Chicago casino, with the caveat that the list is not “definitive.” Other sites, including downtown, could be considered.

Now it’s the job of the aldermen of the wards that include the five proposed sites to lead the public debate on the suitability of each.

If the local alderman doesn’t know what’s best for a ward when it comes to a casino moving in, we don’t know who does.

If ever there were a job for a Chicago alderman, this is it. Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday proposed five possible sites for a Chicago casino, with the caveat that the list is not ‘definitive.’ Other sites could be considered.

At the end of the process, the city may choose a site that doesn’t enjoy the full support of that ward’s alderman. What’s best for the whole city is not always what’s best for a particular neighborhood.

But we can’t imagine the city would build a casino on, say, the old Michael Reese site if the alderman — in this case Sophia King — were adamantly opposed. Which she is. The mayor would have to bring her around.

The challenge is to choose a site that maximizes the potential revenue from a casino while creating a community anchor for further development. Or, at the very least, pick a site that doesn’t pull a neighborhood down.

Of the five proposed sites, we wrote enthusiastically last December about one of them — 111th Street and the Bishop Ford Freeway in the Illinois International Port District. A casino there, strongly being pushed by Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, would bring jobs to a part of town that has been hurting ever since the once-bustling port went into decline. It could be the hub of a larger entertainment district. It would suck in all those dollars from Illinois gamblers being lost to Indiana casinos.

We also have expressed skepticism in the past about plopping a casino in or near the Loop, which Lightfoot told the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman Thursday she has not ruled out. We have heard from too many experts who say the strength of Chicago’s downtown, when it comes to attracting family-oriented tourism and convention business, is that it keeps the biggest distractions at arm’s length. Convention bookers like that Chicago encourages business first.

Then again, veteran urban affairs reporter Ed Zotti, who’s writing a bi-weekly column for the Sun-Times, made a strong argument just last week that a downtown casino, of all the options, would do the most to generate economic development and jobs.

Zotti cited substantial research that says casinos are a poor tool of neighborhood revitalization.

“Patrons drive to the casino and don’t leave until they’ve spent their last dime hours later and drive home,” he wrote. “They never set foot in the surrounding neighborhood and might as well have been visiting Madagascar.”

So where should the casino go? You tell us. It’s a question that begs for a full and informed debate, which begins in earnest now.

With that in mind, we have asked the aldermen of the five proposed sites to write short opinion pieces making their best argument, for or against. We expect to publish those op-eds early next week.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.