Bally’s Evicts Tribune Printing Plant from Future Chicago Casino Site

It was no more surprise, just an expected make out of unfit news for Tribune Publishing workers when Bally’s issued an prescribed acknowledge of relocation to the printing industrial plant several weeks ago. The Rhode Island-based gambling casino society plans to pulverize the Freedom Center — where the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times are currently printed and where the Tribune newsroom is set — to build Chicago’s 1st casino.

The Tribune for the first time reported receiving the relocation note on Monday.

Bally’s pilot gambling casino plan was selected from among several by the Chicago City Council in May 2022. The vote was followed past the passing of an ordinance to amend the city’s laws to take into account gambling casino gaming. Bally’s $1.74B composite testament include a 500-room hotel, a 3,000-seat theater, 11 restaurants, and 4,000 gaming positions.

While a gambling casino in the bosom of the metropolis would bring home the bacon thousands of jobs for local residents — as advantageously as aid reimburse a substantial portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars Chicago residents run a risk in nearby IN casinos for each one twelvemonth — displacing a major newsprint publishing surgical procedure is a public dealings problem.

Pursuit of Freedom

Tribune Publishing paid $150M to build the Freedom Center in 1979 (nearly $590M today) on 30 acres on the northerly face of the Chicago River. Its public figure was submitted via a companywide contest won by the newspaper’s then-environmental reporter. Casey Bukro well-grounded that the word “freedom” would remind people that “our land is unique for recognizing that a liberate and participating military press is one of the first harmonic necessities for a democratic society.”

Bally’s purchased the situation for $200M from Nexstar Media inward November 2022, comme il faut Tribune Publishing’s landlord. (Nexstar acquired the Freedom Center through its $4.1 1000000000 takeover in 2019 of Tribune Media, the former video programme fortify of Tribune Publishing. The deal did non include Tribune’s word division.)

Within years of its purchase, Bally’s executed a sale-leaseback on the terra firma with Chicago-based Oak Street Real Estate Capital, rearing $500M for cassino twist costs.

Clock is Ticking

Bally’s didn’t set a move-out deadline for Tribune Publishing, but the clock is ticking. Tribune Publishing has no longer than two years to bump a unexampled location for its printing process flora before the casino breaks ground, Bally’s chairman Soo Kim told the Chicago Tribune.

Kim had considered saving the Freedom Center, according to the Tribune. Walking the site with an designer inward December, they devised the thought to shift the location of the resort’s hotel so as to integrated the newspaper surgical procedure as a tourist attractor and long-term gambling casino tenant.

The urban center nixed that idea, Kim told the Tribune.

Tribune Publishing has already exercised an alternative to stretch its term of a contract for another 10 years after it expires this June. However, the extension service won’t pull through the Freedom Center.

“Even with the telephone extension option, there’s a clause inwards the letting that allows for us to relocate,” Kim told the Tribune. “And so we started the outgrowth of piquant that clause.”

Still Some Options

Bally’s and Tribune Publishing are meshed inward arbitrement to ascertain compensation, according to the Tribune, which notes that Bally’s is required to facilitate Tribune Publishing bump a comparable printing process location and must portion out some of its relocation costs. In slip that travail fails, according to the Tribune story, Bally’s would want to either supply a hard currency settlement to the companion or establish a new plant life for Tribune Publishing and charter it to them.

Another possibility, according to the Tribune, could follow relocating the Chicago publishing imperium to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s idled printing plant. Tribune Publishing’s parent company, hedge in fund Alden Global Capital, purchased that endure yr from Gannett for $26M.

Bally’s contrive noneffervescent requires province approval from the Prairie State Gaming Board. The company filed its gambling casino certify application program in August. Bally’s expects the permission to follow sanctioned by spring, next which it will open a temporary gambling casino in July. Its lasting resort is not expected to undetermined before 2026.

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