Casino In Waukegan Il

Casinos in Waukegan on YP.com. See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for the best Casinos in Waukegan, IL. River Casino in Waukegan on YP.com. See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for the best Casinos in Waukegan, IL. COVID-19 puts new Illinois casino licenses on hold The Illinois Gaming Board is mulling proposals for four new casinos earmarked for Waukegan, the south suburbs, Rockford and downstate Williamson County. By Mitchell Armentrout @mitchtrout Oct 29, 2020, 10:32am CDT.

The 2019 Illinois gaming bill allowed for casinos in Danville, Waukegan, Rockford, Williamson County and the south suburbs.

But the Illinois Gaming Board (IGB) still hasn’t given license applicants an answer. And they applied back in October2019.

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The law states that the IGB has a year to process and vet the applications, setting a decision deadline at Oct. 28, 2020.

But now there is fear that the IGB can, and will, extend that date.

Why a delay beyond Oct. 28 is possible

The language in the Illinois Gaming Act gives the IGB some wiggle room.

IGB spokesman Gene O’Shea cited P.A. 101-31 to PlayIllinois, which states:

If the IGB does not issue the licenses within that time period, the statute requires the IGB to submit a written explanation to the applicant explaining why the IGB has not reached a determination and when it reasonably expects to do so.

O’Shea also provided the following statement on the casino licensing process:

Regarding the pending applications, the IGB does not comment on the status of pending applications, other than to say that it is processing, vetting and investigating the new casino applicant submissions. Determinations for approval or denial of an owner’s licensee will be made at a board meeting.

The next board meeting is on Oct. 28, and this figures to be the most pressing issue on the agenda.

Some IL casino applicants may be cause of delay

IGB Administrator Marcus Fruchter spoke for a few minutes about the casino licensing process at the last board meeting on Sept. 17.

He pointed out that the board’s responsibilities have more than doubled since last year, but also spoke to issues from the other side. Fruchter said:

“The staff’s already substantial work is made more complicated when applicants and existing licensees neglect to provide timely, complete answers, documents and disclosures or responses to any other board requests. Most make timely and accurate disclosures, but the ones that don’t gum up the works for everyone.”

Fruchter went on to say that the IGB is a small state agency, and that submitting incomplete information wastes time and resources for everyone.

To that point, the IGB denied Haven Gaming’s Danville application earlier this year. HavenGaming withdrew its application in July, and the Wilmot family now holds principal interest.

A letter from Southland

State Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, and Kristi DeLaurentiis, executive director of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, urged the IGB to speed up its process in August, according to a column in the Chicago Tribune.

“We respectfully remind you that this south suburban license is long overdue and a decision delayed is a decision denied,” DeLuca and DeLaurentiis wrote.

DeLuca also thinks a significant delay beyond Oct. 28 is possible.

“COVID-19 cannot be allowed to serve as a reason for inaction,” they continued. “The deadline as set forth in the statute is approaching and the future of nearly a million residents rests in your hands.”

DeLuca and DeLaurentiis said their communities are struggling financially due to COVID-19. A casino would help create jobs and generate tax revenue.

They wrote the letter before Fruchter’s comments at the board meeting. Perhaps in response, Fruchter made sure to note that the board has been working tirelessly throughout the pandemic on various issues.

Illinois casino applicants

Here’s a complete list of current Illinois casino applicants, per the IGB website:

• 815 Entertainment, LLC (Hard Rock Casino Rockford): Rockford applicant
• CDI-RSG Waukegan, LLC (Rivers Waukegan Casino): Waukegan applicant
• Full House Resorts, Inc.: Waukegan applicant
• Lakeside Casino LLC (North Point Casino): Waukegan applicant
• South Suburban Development LLC: Matteson applicant
• Southland Ho-Chunk Entertainment, LLC: Lynwood applicant
• Southland LIVE, LLC (Southland Live Casino): Calumet City applicant
• Walker’s Bluff Casino Resort, LLC: Williamson County applicant
• Wind Creek IL LLC: Homewood/East Hazel Crest applicant

Every casino on that list will be counting down the days until the next IGB meeting on Oct. 28.

After 30 years of failure, Lake County’s largest city finally is on the cusp of getting a casino thanks to a major gambling expansion in Illinois.

But two of the teams contending for the Waukegan betting house include key figures who’ve been denied gambling licenses in the past because of concerns from regulators, a Tribune review has found.

One bid team is led by Michael Bond, a former Democratic state senator who until recently ran a video gambling company. Bond’s casino would be operated by a man who was previously an executive at a casino chain when it surrendered its Missouri riverboat gambling licenses following a scandal. The money behind Bond’s effort is a private equity firm that lost a New York gambling license in a troubled bidding process that surfaced issues about some of the firm’s investment partners.

Then there’s the bid from real estate mogul Neil Bluhm, who owns part of Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Rivers’ team includes developers whose ties to a Springfield power broker were cited by Illinois gambling regulators when Waukegan lost its last bid for a casino in 2008.

Mindful of its difficult history — and facing scrutiny after Bond financed the election campaigns of several aldermen last year — Waukegan declined to pick just one casino proposal to send to the Illinois Gaming Board, as the other host cities in the state did. Instead, Waukegan leaders forwarded three proposals, leaving it to understaffed gambling regulators to decide which of the contenders is best suited to build and run the casino.

“Waukegan, we have a little history of being burned,” Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham said of the decision. “Our position this time is we’re not going to leave anything to chance in the event that the Illinois Gaming Board doesn’t like the one that we select. … I was not going to let that happen again.'

The stakes are high for everyone involved, including Waukegan, which has long seen a casino as salvation for a sputtering local economy — going all the way back to 1986, when a previous mayor envisioned a “French Riviera of the Midwest.”

State gambling officials, meanwhile, are under pressure to show that they can police and monitor an expanding industry. They plan to bring in outside help to vet those who want the casino. And the bidders, which also include Nevada-based Full House Resorts, see a lucrative and rare opportunity.

The Bond bid

Bond’s partners have gaming experience outside of Illinois but also have run afoul of state licensing officials in some instances.

One is Warner Gaming, founded by William Warner. He was a finance executive at Station Casinos when it became embroiled in a Missouri controversy that ultimately saw it surrendering a license and paying a fine.

As it sought to open up casinos there, Station hired local lawyer Michael Lazaroff, who later pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2000 for hiding some of the payments he received from Station.

Lazaroff told the state’s gambling regulators he was paid by Station to help the company win the licenses. That included using his personal relationship with the Missouri gaming board chairman by having side conversations, which are a violation of the rules. Lazaroff also told regulators that Station knew he was having the side conversations, and he credited those talks with helping Station win the licenses.

The Missouri gaming board subpoenaed several Station executives to testify about Lazaroff’s work for the company. Among them was Warner, who as Station’s chief finance officer wrote the checks to Lazaroff.

The executives initially refused the subpoena. Warner recently told the Tribune that there had been concerns about the format of the initial hearing, but that he ultimately sat for questioning.

In a 65-page transcript provided by Missouri gaming officials, Warner repeatedly testified that he could not recall how or why the payments to Lazaroff were ordered.

“Out of eight hours (of questioning), I think mine was about 20 or 15 minutes,” Warner told the Tribune. “I think, based on the full testimony that everybody gave, there was no deemed wrongdoing by Station.”

Station ultimately paid a $1 million fine and surrendered its Missouri licenses in a deal that did not require it to admit any wrongdoing.

The episode in Missouri hasn’t prevented Warner from operating casinos in several states, including Nevada and Iowa. But Warner’s lawyer acknowledged to Massachusetts gaming officials that it was a factor in his decision to pull out of a 2013 casino bid in that state, where regulators said in a report that they had received “certain derogatory information” on Warner from his time in Missouri.

Warner told the Tribune he has no concerns about his history in Missouri.

“I’ve been licensed 20 some odd times in multiple jurisdictions, currently licensed in several,” Warner said. “I don’t anticipate it being an issue.”

Warner told the Tribune he might get into video gambling as well. Last month, the Illinois Gaming Board approved Warner’s application to operate video gambling terminals.

Meanwhile, Clairvest, the private equity firm for Bond’s bid, was part of a troubled effort for a video slot machine contract at a New York racetrack.

Clairvest’s partnership included an Australian investor who was deemed ineligible for a New York license due to legal issues back home and another man who “refused to cooperate with authorities” in a double homicide investigation despite being with the victims a few hours earlier, according to a New York inspector general investigation.

In addition, the partnership included two others who had ties to a man who’d been convicted of securities fraud, according to the inspector general report. Several news accounts said the fraud benefited a member of the New York mafia.

Jeff Parr, Clairvest’s vice chairman and managing director, said the firm joined the bid after the group of investors already had been formed. Once concerns about the problematic partners were raised, Clairvest struggled to distance itself and salvage the deal.

Ultimately, the inspector general deemed the entire bidding process to have been flawed. The gambling license went to another group.

“We played by the rules,” Parr said. “Some things came to light in the process. The (government) did a full investigation and condemned the process and the people who ran the process. … It was not good ... and we were cleared. We did nothing untoward.”

As for Bond himself, the former lawmaker made campaign contributions to Waukegan elected officials who would be in position to potentially select his bid as the city’s sole casino proposal. In 2019 alone, Bond’s company and its affiliated political action committees spent $266,000 to help elect four of the city’s nine aldermen. For three aldermen, Bond’s money was the only outside contributions they received.

Bond declined to speak with the Tribune for this story and instead requested questions be submitted to a spokesman. In a written response, Bond denied that he’d sought special treatment for his casino bid and said he’d “respected the rules of the (request for proposals on a casino) and the city’s desire to run a fair, open and transparent RFP process.”

He said his campaign contributions were aimed at backing candidates that were supportive of video gambling.

The Bluhm bid

The closest Waukegan came to landing a casino was in 2008, and what happened then has resurfaced in the city’s current casino chase.

The state was reissuing a gambling license that twice had been earmarked for Rosemont, only to be yanked awaydue to questions about alleged mob ties.

Waukegan was one of three finalists, putting forth a bid based on a contract it had with developers Alan Ludwig and Richard Stein, who had the exclusive right to build and operate a casino in the city.

The Gaming Board rejected Waukegan’s bid, citing Ludwig and Stein’s “long-standing association” with William Cellini, a Springfield influence peddler who later went to prison after being convicted of shaking down a Hollywood producer for campaign cash on behalf of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Cellini had a “participation option” in the development company run by Ludwig and Stein, which Cellini sold to a politically connected family friend in 2007, court records show. Still, gaming regulators wrote that concerns about Cellini’s involvement “relate to the character, reputation, experience and financial integrity factor,” of the casino bid.

Instead, the license was awarded to Neil Bluhm, who built Rivers Casino down Interstate 294 in Des Plaines. Now Bluhm is trying to add a second casino 30 miles up the highway at Fountain Square in Waukegan.

Holding a 6% stake in Bluhm’s latest bid? Ludwig and Stein.

The duo joined forces with Bluhm last year after Waukegan had preemptively sued Ludwig, asking a judge to dismiss his claim that he still had an exclusive right to build a casino. The suit was dropped after Waukegan voted to send the Bluhm casino bid to the state.

A Ludwig attorney did not respond to repeated messages left by the Tribune. A secretary at Ludwig’s firm said he was traveling and unavailable.

Ludwig had accused Waukegan in a court filing of tilting its casino bidding process in favor of Bond, noting that Bond’s companies and political action committees had spent heavily to elect Waukegan officials.

In turn, Bond’s group has suggested to the Tribune that Bluhm’s bid has gotten behind-the-scenes help from state Sen. Terry Link, who helped negotiate the gambling bill in Springfield and has since been identified by a source as a federal cooperating witness in a government corruption probe. Link has denied he is a cooperating witness.

As evidence, Bond’s group points to an email the senator sent to Park City Mayor Steve Pannell in September. The email included “draft remarks” for Pannell a few days before he delivered them almost verbatim at a public hearing on the casino bids.

Casino In Waukegan Il

Pannell, whose town would share in Waukegan casino revenue, supported Bluhm’s bid. In the remarks sent by Link, Pannell said Rivers Casino would make charitable contributions to local institutions — information about Bluhm’s bid that was not public.

“Our view is there’s no way (Link and Pannell) could have gotten that information from a heavily redacted proposal from Rivers unless it was fed to them by someone,” said Parr of Clairvest, the Canadian private equity firm that’s financing the Bond bid. It’s “very disturbing when it was supposed to be a fair, clean and transparent process.”

Pannell and Link did not respond to multiple inquiries from the Tribune.

In late October, a source revealed to the Tribune that Link is a federal cooperating witness whose recordings led to a bribery charge against then-state Rep. Luis Arroyo of Chicago. The senator had agreed to cooperate with the FBI in the hopes of winning a break at sentencing on expected tax fraud charges, authorities said in a court filing.

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