RIVER WEST — Bally’s Chicago needs a new location for its massive 400-room hotel tower at its permanent casino site after officials discovered construction could damage existing city infrastructure.
Bally’s plans to build the city’s first permanent casino at 777 W. Chicago Ave. In the meantime, it has been operating temporarily at Medinah Temple in River North.
The original plans for the $1.7 billion casino included a 505,000-square-foot hotel tower on the north end of the site, and restaurants, retail, gaming and a 3,000-seat theater on the south end. The site plan also included 10 acres of public open space and a 1-acre riverside park.
A spokesperson with the city’s Department of Planning and Development confirmed Wednesday there were infrastructure challenges where the hotel tower was planned, and the casino company is trying to revise its plan.
Bally’s submitted an updated building permit application Tuesday that excluded the original 500-foot-tall hotel tower. Instead, the description includes construction caissons and piles for only the four-story, 74-foot tall building housing the casino and a hotel with 100 rooms.
Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim told the Tribune that driving caissons into the ground to construct the hotel tower might damage the city’s municipal water management infrastructure pipes.
“Due to unforeseen infrastructure issues, an alternate plan has been submitted to the city to move the hotel tower on the site and to stay on schedule for 2026,” a Bally’s spokesperson said in a statement. “The altered plan incorporates more greenspace as requested by the community and delivers the initial hotel rooms and completed hotel tower on the project site, as promised.”
It’s not yet known where Bally’s will relocate the hotel tower.
Bally’s project site incorporates one subsection of a four-part planned development zone approved by the city. The zone is bound by Chicago and Grand avenues to parts of Halsted and east to the Chicago River.
The casino and hotel tower were set to take up a northeast chunk of this zone, near the Chicago River.
All of these areas are zoned to support hotel development, a city spokesperson said. Bally’s can move its hotel tower to any of these subsections.
Bally’s has not yet submitted plans for the relocation of the tower, which would be subject to approval by the planning department’s zoning administrator, according to a spokesperson.
According to the approved planned development document, Bally’s already has plans for the additional subareas, which include office space and upwards of 4,799 residential units. Moving the hotel would not add density to what’s already planned, but it would cut into the number of residential and office units planned for the area, documents show.
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), whose ward encompasses the permanent site, said he was aware of the site change but had not yet been briefed by the city or Bally’s officials. That briefing is set for next week, Burnett said.
Construction will be split into two phases. The first will include the casino and the 100 on-site hotel rooms, which now will be moved to the south end of the casino building, Kim told the Tribune. The hotel tower will be in the second phase, and that building could be shifted further south or west from its original location.
Finalizing plans for the updated first phase is expected to be completed within weeks, while new plans to relocate the tower could take several months, Kim told the Tribune. The setback won’t delay the 2026 opening, Kim also said.
“There’s no delay as long as we’re building the 100 rooms somewhere,” Kim told the Tribune. “And the easiest place to build 100 rooms is on top of the existing structure versus trying to lay out new structures. The whole point of this minor change is so there’s no delay.”
Construction is slated to begin this year.
Printing operations at the Tribune Publishing site are scheduled to end by July to make way for the casino, according to the Tribune. Bally’s bought the 30-acre site last year and recently negotiated with the newspaper company on its exit so construction can begin.
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