Illinois Gaming Board Receives Hard Rock International's Proposal For $300M Casino Complex

Hard Rock International has submitted the official proposal for the $300 million casino complex in Rockford, Illinois. The proposal was sent to Illinois Gaming Board after being ed by Rockford City Council prior to that.

Part of Gambling Expansion

Hard Rock Casino Rockford will be developed tly by Hard Rock International and 53 investors from Rockford…

…and it is planned for the property to be located where the old Clock Tower Resort was – on East Estate Street. The venue will boast a 65,000 square foot gaming floor with slot machines and table games. It will also have a 1,600-seat Hard Rock Live venue and a Hard Rock Café.

Illinois Governor, J.B.Pritzker, has approved the gambling expansion efforts as a part of Rebuild Illinois – a major scheme that will see huge infrastructure built all across the state with approximately $41.5 billion in investments.

This gambling expansion seeks to secure the building of six new casinos all across the state, and that includes this one in Rockford.

The Illinois city was the first to submit its appeal to be authorized to host the casino, of all six locations planned. On October 7th, City Council has green-lit Hard Rock’s idea of building a casino there…

…but the final say will be had by Illinois state gambling regulator who will decide whether Hard Rock will get the building permit.

Very Thorough Application

Hard Rock International has submitted the official proposal for the casino in a document that exceeded 10,000 pages…

…as well as the official casino license application to the Illinois Gaming Board Part of this application process was a payment of $250,000 application fee as well as a $50,000 background check fee.

The application will be reviewed by the Board in the next 12 months at most and will perform all the background checks on everyone that is a part of the project.

Rockford’s Mayor, Tom McNamara, has commented Hard Rock’s prospective coming into this town. He added that he hopes that regulator will “take the application papers in the order in which they were brought to them and they see we have an international brand, an incredibly thoughtful and thorough proposal, and they see that a community of citizens at large and the City Council has highly ed it and they will move quickly on it.”

Who Invested in the Project

The company has unveiled the list of individuals and business organizations that are investing in this Rockford Casino project. City Council has kept these confidential before that, as was Hard Rock’s wish.

This previous decision not to disclose the list of investor names was met with criticism by the local residents. Linda McNeely, alderwoman who was the only one to vote against Hard Rock resort during October 7th vote, said Hard Rock had no reason to keep investors as a secret and that residents of the city have the right to know who will benefit from the opening of the casino.v

Source:

“Hard Rock Rockford applies for state casino license”, rrstar.com, October 25, 2019.