A Cook County judge on Tuesday denied a request from a rejected bidder to block state gambling regulators from proceeding with a vote on the license for a long-sought Waukegan casino.
In denying Potawatomi Waukegan Casino’s request for a temporary restraining order, Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan said she was not convinced the company, owned by Wisconsin’s Forest County Potawatomi Community, has standing under Illinois’ gambling law to make the request.
Potawatomi “doesn’t come in as a resident of Waukegan, or even a resident of the state of Illinois, but comes in as a competitor of the other casinos in an effort … to be able to open a casino,” Horsan said. “So I don’t believe that plaintiff is an entity that the statute was designed to protect.”
The Illinois Gaming Board is expected to vote Wednesday on whether Las Vegas-based Full House Resorts or North Point Casino, led by former state senator turned video gambling executive Michael Bond, gets to develop the Waukegan casino.
A casino location in the 28-acre city-owned Fountain Square site bordered by Lakehurst Road and Northpoint Boulevard on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019 in Waukegan. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
In a separate, ongoing federal lawsuit, the Potawatomi group has alleged former Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham and City Council allies “rigged” the city’s bidding process to favor bond Bond after he bankrolled their campaigns. Bond has declined to comment on the allegations, while Cunningham has denied them.
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The Gaming Board was poised to vote in mid-November on the Waukegan license but agreed to table the matter until after a federal court mediation session between the city and Potawatomi that took place late last month.
In the Cook County case, the Potawatomi’s main argument was that Waukegan failed to meet all of the requirements under state law before sending two casino license applications to the Gaming Board to choose a winner.
Under the law, the city was required to have “mutually agreed” with developers on revenue sharing, zoning and a number of other issues before sending an application to the board, said Dylan Smith, an attorney for the Potawatomi.
Instead, Smith said, the City Council voted in October 2019 to approve resolutions saying it had reached agreement “in general terms” on the necessary issues with Full House, North Point and Rivers Casino Waukegan,
Rivers, a joint venture from casino magnate Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming and Churchill Downs, withdrew its proposal earlier this fall.
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“Nobody has a guarantee or a right to be considered for license, but they do have a right to participate in a process at the municipal level that complies with the statute and an expectation that the Gaming Board is not going to take a ‘see no evil’ approach if the statutory preconditions to its action have not been met,” Smith said during Tuesday’s hearing.
Waukegan attorney Glenn Davis called the Potawatomi’s request to block state regulators from acting “manufactured emergency, trying to pull this whole thing to a stop at this late date” after a lengthy public process.
“Agreements can take a lot of forms, and the Potawatomi do not get to dictate that we were required to come up with some particular form of agreement, some detailed development agreements, some detailed real estate acquisition agreements, a host of other agreements that would go into actually building out a casino,” Davis said.
After denying the request to block the Gaming Board from taking action on the license, Horan said the Potawatomi remained free to ask the board to postpone its consideration.
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Gaming board spokesman Joe Miller declined to comment when asked whether the board would proceed with the item on Wednesday’s agenda, other than to say the board “respects the court’s decision and will continue its work.”
The Waukegan casino license was created in 2019 as part of a massive gambling expansion Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law that also included license for Chicago, the south suburbs, Rockford, Danville and Williamson County in southern Illinois. The Gaming Board is expected to vote Wednesday to issue the south suburban license to developers in either Matteson or Homewood and East Hazel Crest.
Waukegan officials have sought a casino for decades. The far north suburb was spurned in 2008 when regulators, citing ties between developers and a Springfield power broker who later went to federal prison, knocked it out of contention for a license that ultimately went to Rivers Casino in Des Plaines.
Because of that history, former mayor Cunningham and other officials decided to send the Gaming Board multiple applicants this time around.
Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor, who as an alderman voted against sending any casino proposals to the state for consideration, has said that once the state makes its selections, “the city will actively engage with that party.”
dpetrella@chicagotribune.com
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