By John Flink
Shortly after the Rosemont deal was announced and construction of a casino parking garage was begun near a tangle of on- and off-ramps, the process was cut short by a lawsuit filed by a group of investors, Lake County Riverboat LLC. The group claims the legislation that allowed an existing casino license to be transferred from a defunct boat in Jo Daviess County was written in a way that made Rosemont a sure winner. Such so-called special legislation is unconstitutional in Illinois. Unfortunately for Waukegan, Lake County Riverboat doesn’t want to put a boat just anywhere in Lake County. The group has inked a preliminary deal with the village of Fox Lake, a resort town on the Chain o’ Lakes on the far west side of Lake County, for a casino boat there.
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To bolster its casino bid, Rosemont enlisted the aid of the West Central Municipal Conference. Founded in 1980, the WCMC now includes 36 suburban communities in western Cook County. It shares membership and office space in Westchester with the West Cook Community Development Corporation and the West Cook County Solid Waste Agency, groups that also tackle issues of interest to neighboring communities, from purchasing equipment to figuring out where to dispose of trash.
The revenue-sharing formula is simple enough. Rosemont levies a 5 percent municipal tax on casino revenues and keeps 20 percent of it. Using the WCMC’s estimate of $400 million in annual revenues, Rosemont would collect $20 million total and keep $4 million for itself. For the first five years of the agreement, however, Rosemont would get an additional $3 million from the same fund. Half of the remaining $13 million would be divided equally among the 71 member communities, giving each town a flat fee of $91,549. The other half would be divided on a per capita basis. There are roughly 1.1 million Cook County residents in the 71 supporting communities, each one of whom would be worth about $5.91. A city with 25,000 residents, for example, would get an additional $147,750, for a total of about $239,299.
All this activity is scrunched into 2.5 square miles, only 25 percent of which is zoned for residential use. The town’s glittering conglomeration of high-rise hotels and office buildings give it the distinction of being one of very few cities in the metropolitan area, according to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, with an inverse ratio of jobs to residents–about six to one. Chicago, by comparison, has a huge number of jobs–about 1.4 million of them–but they have to be divvied up among more than 2.8 million people, so the jobs-to-residents ratio is about one to two.
“I’m not asking for a handout, but I don’t think it’s fair,” Barklow said. “When a racetrack gets into financial trouble because of casinos, the government provides compensation. What about the loss to East Dubuque and Jo Daviess County? Where’s the parity?” In fact Illinois’ grand experiment in legalized casino gambling has steamrolled the interests of many supposed to have benefited from it. Jo Daviess County was left with expensive, publicly financed infrastructure that was barely used. East Dubuque lost a sorely needed boost to its business district.
“We have 20 or so nightspots that benefited, and landlords made out well on apartments because there was a pretty high turnover of people who worked on the boat,” said Thomas Sheahan, president of the East Dubuque Business and Tourism Bureau. “There were some mixed reactions from restaurant owners, though. The boat also offered food and sold it cheaper as a way to get people in.” Still, economically the Silver Eagle was good for East Dubuque, Sheahan concluded, though he occasionally felt concern for the potential negative impact on the community, particularly people destined to develop gambling problems. But in his mind that problem didn’t have enough time to manifest itself to any great degree.
