Chicago Chinatown Voices Casino Concerns, Cites High Addiction Rates Among Community

Some expanse residents inwards Chicago’s Chinatown are speaking upwards most their concerns regarding a casino resort potentially coming to the community.

Illinois passed a commercial gaming account inward 2019 that Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed into law of nature that July. The cassino enlargement package authorized cinque casinos inwards the Chicago suburbs, positive a larger integrated resort hotel (IR) downtown.

Last month, Windy City unveiled the five qualifying IR proposals for the lone downtown Windy City cassino license. Four of them are targeting sites inwards the Near South Side, which is adjacent to Chinatown.

Rush Street Gaming, Bally’s, and Hard John Rock feature to each one rendered IR schemes to the city that suggest large casino resorts in and around the McCormick Place rule center. Chicago-based Rush Street has pitched the metropolis ii IR possibilities for the McCormick area.

Asian Gambling Prevalence

Community leaders in the Chinatown biotic community trust bringing such a casino to the neighbourhood would work a universe that is already vulnerable to developing gaming problems.

If you were to expect anyone sour the street, most potential IX out of 10 will tell you they experience someone who struggles with gambling,” stated resident Eunice Liao.

Liao made her comments to Block Club Chicago, a local nonprofit news organization. Liao dynasty heads a job gambling computer programme inward Chinatown at the Pui Tak Center, a church-based community of interests center. Chicago’s Greater Chinatown community of interests has a universe estimated at north of 30,000 people.

Gambling is a treasured pastime for many Asiatic cultures. “If you don’t gamble, you don’t cognize how lucky you are,” is a pop expression among Chinese gamblers.

But mental health experts say the dividing line between recreational play and playing for entertainment’s rice beer is often blurred with problem gaming behavior.

“Casinos experience capitalized on this by marketing aggressively to Asians — especially Asian immigrants — past offering Asian entertainers, ethnic food, discharge transportation, and even out identity card dealers who talk Asian languages,” explains a Psychology Today hit the books on problem gambling risks inward Asian populations in the US where casinos subsist nearby.

Casinos Could Quash Worries

Rush, Bally’s, and Hard John Rock are mark to nowadays their five casino blueprints during an in-person and online streaming case today origin at 12:45 pm CST.

In-person attendees, as wellspring as those watching remotely, testament live able-bodied to expect the casino operators questions regarding their development plans. The mechanical press conference will stream online here.

Chicago’s bespeak for proposals issued inward Apr elaborated an regalia of minimum requirements and amenities for qualifying IR bids. The RFP stated that proposals must come with 500 or fewer hotel rooms, get together space, restaurants and bars, and an amusement venue.

But the RFP said zero well-nigh what sorting of requirements the downtown Chicago cassino must tender to forbid the resort hotel from delivering societal harms to at-risk populations.

One resolution is to allocate a small portion of the associated gaming revenue enhancement revenue the cassino would generate, opines Grace Cham McKibben, executive director managing director of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community,

The end is to fund local back up and intervention programs inward the communities flat surrounding the resort.