Construction on the new $360 million Hollywood Casino-Aurora resort has shifted indoors as officials say the outside is nearly complete.
The new location of the city’s Hollywood Casino — which is located along Farnsworth Avenue and Bilter Road, across the street from Chicago Premium Outlets mall and near the Interstate 88 interchange — is set to replace the casino currently in downtown Aurora. Construction officially broke ground in November 2023.
In a recent interview with The Beacon-News, Hollywood Casino-Aurora Vice President and General Manager Greg Moore said the new casino and resort is still on track to open in the first half of 2026. The exterior of the building is mostly done, except for some digital billboards that still need to be hung, and much of the landscaping is in, he said.
In December 2024, Moore said that the casino resort’s hotel had been built to its full seven-story height, the entertainment center was fully enclosed and the pre-cast 1,000-car parking garage was nearly complete. Then, in February, city officials said the parking garage had been fully built and around three-fourths of the windows had been installed on the hotel.
By March, the hotel’s glass exterior had been completed, and crews were going to be working on interior construction going forward, Moore said at the time.
Despite unusually heavy and record-breaking snowfall in the Chicago area this season, there haven’t been any major delays due to the weather, according to Moore. He said recently that construction crews worked hard to make sure the building was weather tight before the challenging weather began.
Construction on the inside of the building is “coming along very nicely,” Moore said. Crews have installed bathrooms on the lower floors of the hotel and are working their way up, a lot of work on the back-of-house kitchens is done, and work to install the raised gaming floor is set to begin soon, he said.
Plus, there’s a lot of wiring that has to get done to accommodate a casino floor, according to Moore.
The new casino and resort is expected to have 1,200 gaming positions, about 220 hotel rooms, a retail sportsbook, an outdoor entertainment area, a full-service spa, a roughly 12,000-square-foot event center with meeting areas and a number of bars and restaurants.
Earlier this year, it was announced that celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis will open an Italian steakhouse called Sorella at the new Aurora site. The restaurant is expected to have outdoor seating and an open kitchen with a menu including fresh pasta, steaks, Roman-style pizza and other Italian dishes.
Also coming to the Aurora site is the Boulevard Food & Drink Hall, which is set to include Lucky Goat, a new burger restaurant by celebrity chef Stephanie Izard, the first suburban locations for Antique Taco and Pretty Cool Ice Cream, and the debut of Five50 Pizza in the Chicago market.
The food hall is being developed in partnership with McClain Camarota Hospitality, the restaurant group of James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur Shawn McClain.
Joliet’s new Hollywood Casino location is also getting the food hall and a restaurant by De Laurentiis.
The new Hollywood Casino location in Aurora is expected to open with 800 employees, Moore said, up from the mid-300s that the current casino location had at the start of the year. Already, the company has made “quite a few” hires for the new location, putting the Aurora casino’s current employee count over 400, he said.
The company has held a number of job fairs to prepare for the opening of the new location, and Moore said more are planned for next year.
One is planned for Jan. 17, with more details available on the company’s website: www.hollywoodcasinoaurora.com/new-casino-information/careers/job-fair. Another is planned for Feb. 21, and a recruitment center is coming soon to the Chicago Premium Outlets mall, according to Moore.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
