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The wait is nearly over for those looking to visit the new Hollywood Casino Aurora.
The new casino and hotel along Farnsworth Avenue and Bilter Road, near the Interstate 88 interchange and across the street from Chicago Premium Outlets mall, is gearing up to open to the public on Wednesday evening, boasting numerous restaurant offerings, a 226 room-hotel, spa and a gaming floor able to accommodate 1,200 people.
Work on the property has been finishing up in the past few weeks. But, after years of work, the finish line appears near for those involved in bringing the casino to its new home in Aurora.
The new casino— a $360 million project that’s been under construction since 2023 — is replacing the longtime riverboat Hollywood Casino in downtown Aurora, which turned off its lights on June 10 after operating there since the 1990s.
Talk of the move had been underway for about a decade, according to Greg Moore, the vice president and general manager of Hollywood Casino Aurora. Moore said he became involved with the project in 2016, when it was only a “preliminary conversation” between the city of Aurora and PENN Entertainment, Hollywood Casino’s parent company.
But conversations only become “serious” after a change in Illinois law in 2019 made it “far more feasible to pull something of this size off,” he said.
When Illinois legalized riverboat gambling 36 years ago, it meant driving to places like Joliet, Aurora and Peoria, paying an admission fee and taking a two-hour ride down a river on a floating casino.
But it took time — and regulation changes — for gambling to move to dry land.
In 1999, the state eliminated the cruising regulations, allowing casinos to remain docked or simply be built over water. That enabled Hollywood Casino Aurora to move to its longtime home built on a moored barge in 2002.
Then, the state’s sweeping 2019 gambling expansion bill, which added everything from six new casinos to sports betting, took it a step further, allowing all casinos to be built on or moved to dry land.
It was that law that precipitated Hollywood Casino Aurora’s eventual move to its new home off Interstate 88, according to Moore.
As things took shape, Moore and casino staff worked at both the old and new properties simultaneously, he explained last week, until the downtown location officially closed earlier this month.
But it’s been “really exciting” to be putting the finishing touches on a project that’s been a long time coming, according to Moore.
“Seeing 10 years of working toward this has just been thrilling,” he said. “Once you see the slot machines get installed, it really started to come to life.”
The new casino features a gaming floor that can accommodate 1,200 people actively engaged in slot machines or table games, numerous restaurant offerings, a hotel with more than 200 guest rooms, a spa, meeting areas and an event center. It’s expected to employ 700 people from the area, which the PENN-owned Hollywood Casino says is double what the downtown Aurora property employed.
Off of the gaming floor are a number of food options. There’s the main “O Bar,” an Asian restaurant called “Red Lotus,” a sports bar with a state-of-the-art retail sportsbook and an entertainment bar called “& Vine.” The casino floor and its adjoining restaurants will be restricted to those 21 years old or older, but the rest of the property is meant to be family-friendly.
Red Lotus, which sits right off of the casino’s baccarat room, boasts a menu of dishes like potstickers, Kung Pao chicken, lamb chops and egg rolls.
The nearby sports bar, which also sits off of the gaming floor, will feature traditional bar food with modern twists, explained Ben Jones, the culinary director for the casino, at a media preview last week. It’ll serve things like smash burgers, ribeye steak and salmon, he said.
It will also be serving up what they’re calling the “Chitrocity”: a hot dog wrapped in Italian beef, provolone, parmesan, giardiniera and marinara, which will be wrapped in pizza crust, deep fried and sliced up, according to Jones.
Moore is, in fact, the brain behind that particular dish. The general manager said it was the result of a “bizarre dream” he had about four months back about people arguing over what the best iconic Chicago food was.
“Is it the pizza, the Italian beef or the dog?,” Moore recalled. “Woke up and I said, ‘Why can’t it all be one food?’”
The casino’s restaurant options are intended to be a central offering of the new location, according to casino leadership.
For example, there’s Sorella, an Italian steakhouse by celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, which is located just inside the entrance from the casino’s free on-site parking garage.
Guests entering the restaurant will be greeted with a handmade pasta station, along with a bar area, table seating and outdoor dining options. The restaurant will offer pasta dishes like a signature lemon spaghetti with shrimp and lobster ravioli, as well as hand-cut steaks like a Piedmontese ribeye and a 28-ounce “bistecca alla fiorentina.”
And then there’s the Boulevard Food and Drink Hall, the result of a partnership between PENN and McClain Camarota Hospitality. The food hall includes options like a coffee shop, a new burger spot from celebrity chef Stephanie Izard called Lucky Goat, Five50 Pizza and some Chicago staples like Antique Taco, Pretty Cool Ice Cream and Urbanbelly.
A walk through the food hall will take guests to Drift Spa, the second location of a Pennsylvania-based luxury wellness spa by beauty and wellness entrepreneur Stacey Steffes. The spa features massage rooms and stations for hair, makeup and nails, as well as a dimly-lit “relaxation room” with cushioned lounge chairs for those waiting for services.
Rising above the food hall and spa are 226 hotel rooms, including high-end suites with living-room areas.
The hotel is seven stories high — counting up to an eighth floor, however, as there’s no fourth floor. Moore explained that, in some cultures, four is considered an unlucky floor, so they opted to skip it.
The building also holds a 12,000-square-foot event center, which will be available for weddings and corporate events, as well as live acts.
Several shows have already been announced, including X Ambassadors on July 11, Lit and Sponge on July 17, The Marshall Tucker Band on Aug. 28 and Ben Bankas on Sept. 6.
But, while the new property boasts considerably more than just a casino, the impact of the Aurora casino’s move still remains to be seen.
The co-owned Hollywood Casino Joliet, however — which moved in August from a riverboat to a new land-based casino with similar amenities, minus the hotel, has seen its revenue and attendance jump.
As for the old Aurora casino building, Hollywood Casino’s parent company PENN Entertainment has an agreement with the city of Aurora to demolish the downtown riverboat location, including the barge, building and walkway over the Fox River, then turn the land over to the city of Aurora.
The city has said that it intends to move forward with that agreement, noting that the building would be demolished and that the riverfront area would be restored, but has not given additional details about future plans for the site at this point.
The city is supporting the new Hollywood Casino location through an agreed up-front payment of $50 million, to be paid back to the city through a tax increment financing district on the property. The passage of that TIF district was controversial and was opposed by current Mayor John Laesch, who was an alderman at-large on the Aurora City Council at the time.
City officials previously said that the incentive was needed to keep the casino in Aurora.
Moore, after years of work on the project, expressed enthusiasm about the new casino’s future.
“I cannot be happier that we’re bringing a product like this to Aurora,” he said.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
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