Where, oh where, will casinos go?

It seems we’re destined to get several more gambling casinos erected in both Chicago and the nearby suburbs.

Will this become political battleground in war of casinos?

We’ll be able to take our pick of just where we want to go on the occasion we feel the need to throw some money away on the off-chance we can hit a big jackpot and become instantly wealthy.

BUT THERE’S ONE factor that has been popping up in my brain – the way in which the siting of a city-based casino will also impact the way the so-called south suburban casino will be located.

There are several municipalities scattered throughout southern Cook County, all of which are insistent that they’re the only local place to erect one of those tacky, flashy, gaudy structures that promise instant wealth (and downplay the chances you’ll walk out of there flat-broke, instead).

It seems there is one line of thought that a south suburban casino ought to be placed in a community fairly close to the Illinois/Indiana border. Almost as though its existence would stand in the way of people who otherwise would try to fulfill their gambling “jones” by venturing to those casinos in Indiana (Hammond, East Chicago and Gary, to be specific).

Why cross over State Line Road to the land of Hoosiers if you can gamble closer to home?

SO IF THE notion of a casino being located near the Lincoln Highway right by Interstate 394 (just barely in suburban Ford Heights) becomes reality, does that impact the idea of a city-based casino by making it more likely that such a facility would be located in the heart of downtown – to take advantage of the nearby presence of out-of-town tourists?

Or does the concept of putting a city-based gambling complex down around the 10^th Ward (as far southeast as one can go and still be in Chicago proper) become the big boost to the people who think a suburban casino ought to be at a site on Interstate 80 at Halsted Street?

I should make one confession. I have a step-mother who enjoys the environs of a casino (playing the slot machines is her big kick), and that latter location would put a casino about a five-minute drive away from her home.

It intrigues me the way these varying proposals for more gambling are going to impact each other – even though the political people tend to act as though the city-based and suburban-based casinos will exist in differing worlds.

ALMOST AS THOUGH they’re Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Rather than the idea of an East Side neighborhood in Chicago casino being only about a 15-minute drive down the Bishop Ford Freeway to the would-be Ford Heights site.

Which may also suffer from the general reputation that suburb suffers in the public eye. I already can envision the notion that many people will have in thinking a Ford Heights site is too decrepit to want to go to.

Or it could also turn out to be like when Ford Motor Co. decided to build an auto plant in that area, and actually picked a site right on the municipality’s border. What was then East Chicago Heights, Ill., went so far as to rename their town to try to make Ford Motor think they were special.

ONLY TO HAVE the company choose to annex into Chicago Heights proper. Would a casino feel the need to claim they’re in another town (Sauk Village or Lynwood?) to escape the perceived stigma?

For all those people who already are calculating how much of a cut their municipality will receive in tax revenues from a proposed casino, we ought to consider that just because the Illinois General Assembly has given authority to allowing a few more casinos does not mean anybody’s ready to open for business anytime soon.

If anything, the real political infighting will now begin – with village vs. village being pitted against each other to argue the merits of who’s most worthy of having a casino with over-priced buffet where one can gorge themselves in between black jack hands operating within their boundaries.

Because let’s not forget – the operating premises of many casinos is that they want to keep customers inside at all times. They certainly don’t want them spending money at any surrounding businesses in the community – spending that would generate true economic development.

  -30-

Where should Chicago casino be?

Soon-to-be-former Mayor Rahm Emanuel let it be known just where he’d like to see Chicago develop a casino as part of a plan to let the city raise tax monies to pay off pension-related debts.

Envision a casino in the shadow of the port district near Lake Calumet

Not that it’s a shoo-in that a casino will be built any time soon. The city, after all, has been talking for decades about plans to have casino gambling within the municipal limits – without a thing becoming of such talks.

BUT EMANUEL IS talking about a casino down near Lake Calumet on a site by the Illinois International Port, which is the border between the 9^th and 10^th wards – which also are the far southeastern corner of Chicago AND adjacent to the Illinois/Indiana border.

What it is not is a location up at the exact opposite far northwestern corner of Chicago which would be adjacent to O’Hare International Airport, or somewhere near downtown Chicago (perhaps near Navy Pier).

Either of those sites would clearly be meant to entice tourists coming to Chicago to blow a significant amount of their money at our gambling casinos and (in the process) help Chicago pay off some serious bills it has developed.

I can already hear people inclined to want to trash Emanuel in his final months as mayor for picking the “wrong” site for a casino. They’re probably going to dredge up the same tired old rhetoric that they’ve used for ages against the part of Chicago that I actually was born in – and where I have cousins who are life-long residents of.

BUT LISTENING TO Emanuel’s rhetoric, it would appear he realizes one fact that is all-too-true. There are Chicagoans who like to gamble who enjoy the fact they have casinos not that far from where they live.

As Emanuel pointed out, the casinos of Northwest Indiana (particularly the Horseshoe Casino of Hammond that is less than one mile from the Chicago city limits) take in about $40 million per month in gross revenues from people who cross over the state line from Illinois – mostly from Chicago.

Which means Emanuel’s motivation is that he wants to keep people IN Illinois and within the city limits when they choose to throw their money away into slot machines or playing other games of chance.

I’m sure this will offend the Indiana Legislature-types who seem determined to want to bolster their economies off the proximity of part of their state to Chicago. But I can’t say that fact would bother me in the least, since those parts of Indiana with proximity to Chicago usually are amongst the most civilized and livable parts of the Hoosier state.

YES, I KNOW full-well how many people make the cross-over to Indiana for the cheap thrills they can derive from gambling, whereas a full-fledged trip to Las Vegas can be ever-so-costly.

I myself have been to those casinos on occasion, and it never fails to amaze me the amount of Illinois license plates on cars bringing people in to those casinos. I don’t doubt in the least that many of those people would stay closer to home, if only such a gambling facility existed.

As for those people who can’t envision something of the pseudo-luxury level of a casino being built in that part of the city, I suspect they’ve never seen the Harbourside International Golf Center.

It’s a one-time landfill that was converted to a golf course in the mid-1990s, and Emanuel points out there is open land upon which a casino and hotel could be built. It would force people to give up their image of the Southeast Side as a land of slag piles and sludge – which is something that would be beneficial to the city as a while.

SO I WILL be intrigued to see just how successful Emanuel is in his final effort to try to gain something on behalf of Chicago. Although I’m also realistic enough to know what a long-shot the concept is.

There are those who will see this being put at the city’s far Southeast corner and will figure it won’t benefit their home areas in the least.

Particularly those places where horseracing is predominant when it comes to local gambling opportunities. Because all-too-often, casino bills get dragged down because the racetracks want to be offered something to compensate them for the fact that many people will prefer the idea of throwing their money into a slot machine – rather than sticking it under a window to place a bet on the ponies.

For despite all the rhetoric we’ll hear about the glories of horseracing being the “Sport of Kings,” the fact is that most people who go to either racetracks or casinos really have only one goal in mind – a dream of a jackpot big enough that they don’t ever have to work again for a living!

  -30-

Harvey needs to figure out how to continue offering public safety services

It will be interesting to see how suburban Harvey manages to keep its public safety services – as in police and fire – operating at a time when it can’t even pretend to have the money needed to pay for them.

Is Harvey really 'rising?'

Many of the financially-challenged municipalities that comprise the greater Chicago area have budgets that are primarily police and fire departments, with little else left for any of the amenities that might make for an interesting community in which a person would want to live, by choice.

BUT HARVEY HAS delved down to a lower level. It really doesn’t have money left to juggle around its budget so as to keep things running as usual.

That is why the south Cook County municipality is facing layoffs – some 18 firefighters and 13 police officers already have been let go, with more cuts likely to be made in coming days. That’s about half of the existing police and fire departments – which I’m sure already felt like they were understaffed.

Now I’m sure some people are going to think, “Who cares?” They don’t live in Harvey and may not know anyone who ever has. They may think this has little or no effect on them.

But on one level, it does. The reality is that suburban fire departments are all tied into each other. They offer assistance to each other.

Fewer officers will be wearing ...

MEANING ANY SHORTFALL in Harvey means that fire departments in surrounding areas will wind up picking up the slack. They’ll have to answer the calls for assistance that come out of Harvey, which could detract personnel who otherwise would be focusing on protecting their home communities.

I’ve already heard officials in those surrounding towns and villages say how they’re having their attorneys check into the law to see how obligated they are to respond to Harvey. Because I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Harvey figures its neighbors will fill the gap in providing firefighting services.

Meaning we’re bound to hear some accusations of selfish suburbs refusing to fulfill their end of public safety agreements. Although there are those who think it is Harvey refusing to meet its financial obligations that have brought its financial problems on itself.

... these emblems

For it seems that Illinois state government, in the form of state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, has withheld nearly $1.5 million in assorted state funds that Harvey theoretically was entitled to.

THE HARVEY POLICE Pension Fund filed a lawsuit, and a court ordered money withheld, because the city hasn’t been making the payments that ensure its future police retirees will have their retirement plans covered.

The suburb’s Fire Pension Fund is planning to take similar legal action to ensure that the city eventually provides the funding it was supposed to do.

Which, of course, means that people aligned with long-time Mayor Eric Kellogg are now more than willing to blame Mendoza for the problem, while others will say it is Kellogg who’s to blame for Harvey’s financial struggles.

If you get the impression that a situation has evolved in which everybody is blaming everybody else, and that nobody is willing to take responsibility for the very real problem that has developed, that would be the one absolute truth.

This vision of Harvey is a long-distant memory, if not fantasy for modern residents

SO WHAT’S GOING to become of this situation? I fear it will be nothing.

Because Harvey has become one of those communities that many people are more than willing to pay little attention to. They may think of it solely as the place where the one-time Dixie Square mall sat vacant for some three decades before it was finally torn down – and may be better remembered for being used in a scene from The Blues Brothers that made it look better on film than it ever did in real life.

Harvey has become a community where some people can talk about a history in which it was an intriguing blue-collar community, but one that has devolved in recent decades to the point where modern-day residents have no recollection of “the good ol’ days.”

They think a community lacking in the basic services that usually define “quality of life” is the norm. In which case, they may think the lack of police and fire is somehow acceptable. Which is the saddest commentary of all.

  -30-