Bally’s Secures $940M in New Financing for Permanent Chicago Casino

The proposed Bally’s Chicago casino-hotel project. And now, they say, the money is there to make it happen. Or at least to draw some fancy new renderings. (Image: courtesy of Bally’s Chicago and HKS)

Bally’s announced Friday that it had secured an additional $940 million in funding that will allow the company to complete construction on the permanent facility for Bally’s Chicago in River West. 

The deal, made between Bally’s and Pennsylvania-based real estate investment trust Gaming and Leisure Properties, is expected to cover the $800 million funding gap that Bally’s acknowledged for the project earlier this year.

New Renderings Unveil Ohio Street Hotel Tower

Bally’s is required to spend $1.34 billion on the casino development, and has said that it envisions a $1.7 billion complex on the site of the former Chicago Tribune printing plant. The company took over that property earlier in July, and expects to spend most of the remainder of the year demolishing the former structure to make way for its own construction. 

Along with the announcement, Bally’s also revealed new renderings of their proposed casino project. Now, the company says it will complete a 500 room, 34-story hotel tower on Ohio Street as part of a single phase of building that will have the entire gaming facility opened on schedule by September 2026. That’s an update from the original plan to build a hotel closer to Chicago Avenue, a proposal that was scraped after it was found that such construction would damage the city’s water mains. 

“With keys to the property in hand, the new financing secured, a site plan that exceeds the original, and demolition set to start this summer, let there be no doubt that Bally’s Chicago Casino and Hotel will soon rise up along the Chicago River,” Bally’s President George Papanier said in a statement. 

Financing Provides Good News for Beleaguered Project

The announcement comes after a tumultuous period for the Bally’s Chicago project, one in which several prominent individuals appeared to cast doubt on whether it would ever be completed. 

Soo Kim, chairman of Bally’s and the managing partner of Standard General, a hedge fund that owns 26 percent of the company, has made a takeover bid for the company. Investors from K&F Growth Capital warned that they felt the takeover would only worsen the company’s debt issues and could endanger the Bally’s Chicago project. Bally’s ended 2023 with $3.6 billion in debt and just $163.2 million in cash on hand.

Those issues may have led Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to make comments expressing uncertainty over the permanent Bally’s Chicago complex while talking to the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board last month, when he said that the fate of the permanent casino was “still to be determined.”

However, Mayor Johnson expressed more optimism over the project following the news of the additional funding for Bally’s Chicago.

“The City is pleased with this development concerning the financing and construction of Bally’s Permanent Chicago Casino,” Mayor Johnson said in a statement. “We look forward to reviewing the updated plans and proceeding through the review process with the Department of Planning and Development.”

In the meantime, Bally’s continues to operate a temporary Chicago casino out of the historic Medinah Temple site. The casino has attracted over 1 million visitors since opening in September 2023, but has fallen well short of revenue projections for Chicago. The city budgeted for $35 million in tax revenue from the temporary casino in 2024, while it has generated only $6.8 million in taxes through June.