There’s a new hot hand in the casino stakes
Mayor Lori Light foot pulled off a card trick last week in Chicago’s casino deliberations. Or maybe she dealt a new hand. Pick your metaphor. In her administration’s announcement that it has winnowed the casino bids to three, she jostled the order of things and left at least one player at the table feeling pretty good, a player not Neil Blush. It’s Blush who many insiders believed had the inside track on this. He still might. The chairman of Rush Street Gaming, which owns the Rivers Casino in Dee Plains that’s the most lucrative such operation in Illinois, Blush combines real estate development skills with knowledge of gambling, and his political and business contacts here are peerless. Blush was behind two of the five initial bids for a casino site. He formed a strong local partnership to boldly propose taking over Lakeside Center, the oldest and least used convention hall at McCormick Place and the one needing the greatest amount of fixing up. Another bidder, Bally’s also turne...