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The Aurora City Council Tuesday night approved establishing the tax increment financing district for the Hollywood Casino-Aurora resort project.
Aldermen voted 11-1 for three resolutions establishing what is known as the Farnsworth-Bilter TIF District, covering an area roughly surrounded by Corporate Boulevard on the south, Farnsworth Avenue on the east, Bilter Road on the north, and Church Road on the west. It would not include the Gonella Bread factory.
The district is on land owned by Penn Entertainment, the casino’s parent company, which plans to build a $360 million casino resort on it.
The casino will move its current operation out of downtown Aurora, where it has been since 1993, and into the new resort, likely by the end of 2025.
This week’s vote is the culmination of a drive to relocate the casino started back in 2019, when city officials successfully lobbied the General Assembly to allow casinos to move off their previously required riverside sites.
The casino resort will have 1,200 gaming positions, about 220 hotel rooms, a retail sportsbook, an outdoor entertainment area, full-service spa, many bars and restaurants and about a 12,000-square-foot event center with meeting areas. The site will include about 1,700 parking spaces.
Penn Entertainment officials have said the project expects to create 700 construction jobs, and 700 permanent jobs at the new facility, about twice the number of people currently employed at the downtown Aurora casino.
The TIF district established this week was contemplated in a redevelopment agreement between the city and Penn Entertainment approved by the City Council on Oct. 26, 2022.
As an incentive to the company, the city agreed to pay $50 million toward the project upfront. The money would come from a bond issue, which would be paid back by proceeds from the TIF district increment.
The City Council still needs to pass the general obligation bonds themselves, which would likely happen later this year.
City officials have estimated the increment, once the entire resort is built, would generate upward of $5.5 million a year that would go toward the bond service – meaning the payment and the interest.
If the district does not generate enough to cover the bonds, Penn Entertainment has agreed to make up the difference and pay the debt service.
Some 10% of the increment would be declared surplus each year and distributed to all the other taxing bodies, due to an agreement between the city and the Batavia School District.
Any other money collected in the increment could go toward infrastructure costs related to the development, such as water and sewer and road improvements.
The increment is the money collected above the original tax collected on the property before the TIF district is established.
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The lone vote against the TIF resolutions came from Ald. John Laesch, at large, who has opposed the casino project since before he was elected last year.
While city officials have said the resort project and expansion are necessary to keep the casino in Aurora, Laesch questioned whether that was really the case. He asked if the casino ever notified the city it would leave.
“They did not but they didn’t have to,” said Alex Alexandrou, the city’s chief management officer. He said the casino’s declining revenues in their downtown location, brought on by a number of changes in state law governing gaming, as well as increased competition throughout the state, made casino officials consider leaving at some point.
“The decision came down to casino or no casino, so we made the proactive decision to relocate the casino,” Alexandrou said.
Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, said officials could “see the writing on the wall” with increased competition from other casinos and video gambling.
“We already have a casino, and you have to do what you can do to make your casino successful,” Bugg said.
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