O’Hare May Get Casino Connection

The millions of travelers who find themselves at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with a couple of hours to kill may soon be able to fill them by playing blackjack or pouring coins into slot machines.

The Illinois Legislature has approved casino gambling in Cook County, and the likely location is in Rosemont, minutes from the world’s second-busiest airport with 200,000 passengers a day. Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport is the busiest.

No other major U.S. hub has a casino so close, although at airports in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., gamblers can play slot machines right in the terminals.

“We have the opportunity to attract these visitors from across the nation who fly into O’Hare,” said Peter Lombardi, the executive director of the Rosemont Convention Bureau. “If they’re delayed two or three hours, they can hop in a cab or the train and be here in a minute. Then they can get back on a plane.”

Travelers coming through O’Hare or stopping in Chicago may even extend their vacations by hours or even a day to give them time to make a run to the casinos, said Barbara Cappaert, a gambling industry analyst for KDP Investment Advisors.

“It is going to be a unique situation,” Cappaert said. “I could see it as something like the Mall of America [near Minneapolis] that’s 10 minutes from the airport and they have shuttles over there.”

A Rosemont casino is sure to attract hordes of Chicagoans because it would be closer than other Illinois casinos, and Rosemont is accessible by the city’s elevated trains. Whether a casino near the airport will pull most of its money from travelers’ wallets is open to debate.

Maryland Heights, Mo., a suburb of 25,000 people about a 10-minute drive from the St. Louis airport, has a thriving hospitality industry, with 1 million visitors a year staying in its hotels, said City Administrator Mark Levin. Even so, the casinos estimate that just 20% of their patrons come from outside of the immediate region, Levin said. “Most of the money comes from in and around the St. Louis metro area.”

Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, says he will probably sign the bill allowing casino gambling in Cook County.