A top aide to Mayor Brandon Johnson is trying to ground the idea of installing slot machines at O’Hare and Midway Airports for fear it would turn the aerial gateways to Chicago into a chintzy Las Vegas replica.
Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee said the last thing a booming O’Hare needs after a record-setting surge in summer travel is to follow the lead of McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, which has 1,300 slot machines distributed throughout the airport.
Slot machines are impossible to miss at McCarran. They’re everywhere — from the baggage claim area and retail space to terminal gates and car rental kiosks.
“I don’t know if a broader expansion or Vegas-style slots in a Chicago airport would really be something that the public is interested in,” Lee told the Sun-Times. “That would be a pretty significant change to the culture of our airports. Chicago is not known primarily as a gaming destination like Las Vegas. It would… raise a number of concerns.”
Does the adjective “cheesy” come to mind?
“I’ve heard people suggest that and I certainly understand where they may be coming from,” Lee said.
Lee said Bally’s “primary goal for having a presence” at O’Hare and Midway is to use both airports as a marketing tool. Bally’s is building a permanent casino along the Chicago River in the River West neighborhood.
“To let that volume of individuals know that there’s a casino in Chicago and, as they visit, to make sure that they stop by, spend money and create revenue,” Lee said.
Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) has a pending ordinance that would authorize installation of hundreds of video gambling machines beyond security checkpoints at O’Hare and Midway Airports.
Villegas scoffed at the notion that airport slot machines at O’Hare and Midway would somehow diminish Chicago’s reputation as a classy and elegant city.
“If it’s such a sleazy thing, then why the hell are we building a [big] casino?” Villegas said.
Villegas, who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development,
acknowledged that “the way that Vegas has it through the center of the terminals is not good.”
But he believes there is a way to install slot machines in segregated areas of O’Hare and Midway that would occupy air travelers killing time while awaiting departures.
“[You] could envision putting a little area like a café where someone could get an adult beverage and, at the same time, play some slots in an area that’s enclosed,” Villegas said.
The bill that finally ended Chicago’s decades-long quest for a casino gave the city the go ahead to install slots at both airports, but Bally’s has yet to take advantage of it.
The company is singularly focused on completing construction of its $1.7 billion casino and entertainment complex in River West by a September, 2026 deadline and in boosting disappointing revenue from temporary casino at Medinah Temple.
Chicago is staring down the barrel of a $1.12 billion budget shortfall and a $35.9 billion pension crisis made $11 billion worse when Gov. JB Pritzker’s decision to sign a police pension sweetener bill.
“We need to find new revenue that’s separate from property taxes and some of the other fines and fees that this administration has been talking about,” Villegas said. “It’s a time to find a way to say, `Yes.’”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
