News
Wait, That's Not a Riverboat...
October 6, 2010
| Construction on Illinois' 10th and final casino is underway, bringing Development Management Associates and JMB Financial Advisors together with the Bluhm Family's Midwest Gaming for their fourth casino. Des Plaines was awarded the casino license in December of 2008, and the 20-acre site at Devon Avenue and River Road has been demoed and planned out. | |
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| DMA's Charles Porter, Mike Levin, and Jason Westrope (above), with JMB Financial's Stephen Lovelette and John Howley showed us around the site yesterday. One of the major challenges designers and contractors faced was that Illinois requires casinos, or at least their gaming floors, be built over water. Contractors have already dug a shallow pit in the middle of the 150k SF building to fill with water to place under the gaming floor. JMB assisted in arranging about $300M in financing for the project, designed by Klai Juba, who also designed the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas. | |
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| The casino may be the first LEED-certified casino in the country. (Ironically, nobody was willing to wager that it was.) Green elements include natural lighting from the skylights and green walls on the exterior (like green roofs, only vertical instead of horizontal). One perk for green building is that this will be a non-smoking casino because smoking isn't allowed indoors in Illinois. But the casino will feature luxurious heated outdoor smoking decks. It will feature "Midwest Modern" architectural themes and include several restaurants and a music venue. The site can also be expanded to include more parking and two hotels. |
