By Ricky Rieckert
Dear readers,
I’m thankful to former Aurora mayor David Pierce for his input last week about the Hollywood Casino in Aurora, which opened in 1993.
The former mayor wrote that the City gave the casino the land, where the casino was built and a small parking lot, by North Island Center.
There was no mention of who paid for the cost involved to raze the buildings on River and Galena, for the parking deck, along with the one south of the New York Street Bridge.
For many years, the Casino was able to generate an enormous amount of revenue.
I’ve heard that when the Casino leaves downtown, the City planned to construct a building as tall or taller than the Leland Tower.
With a lot of the buildings downtown tax-free, and parking garages remaining, the biggest attraction is the Paramount Theatre.
Aurora once made a lot of tax revenue, long before the Casino. In addition, Aurora once was a city with a lot of industrial manufacturing. We had Austin-Western, Barber Greene, Thor Power Tool, Equipto, All-Steel, Caterpillar, Inc. (Aurora plant), and Vendo to name a few.
All of them kept Aurorans employed and the City gained tax revenue, before jobs were shipped overseas or to the southern states for cheaper labor.
Aurora was a blue-collar city. The owners of most of the factories had homes in wealthy communities nearby, so they weren’t living near their employees.
Neighboring Naperville, depended on Kroehler Furniture as a tax resource for years, whereas many were employed there until they closed in the 1970s because of financial difficulties.
Overall, I think people are tired of paying additional taxes and prices for everything, especially food products which keep going up. Something has to change.
I know, many say you’re getting old, when you reminisce about the good times.
I think many of you readers relate to what I’m talking about.
I love Aurora and I love history. I never would have thought in junior high history class, I would read about Fidel Castro as president of Cuba, and he would still be president 40 years later, until his health declined and his brother took over.
Here’s additional history on the casino river boats, before I conclude my article. The two original boats were barges from the Mississippi River, that were on the shore behind Garbe Iron Works. When construction was completed, I pumped the water out of both tanks because they were open and collected rain water until they were sealed.
They needed to remain empty so the computer could have an accurate reading when filling them, to keep the barges level.
Believe it or not, they stayed afloat on just six inches of water.
The rules were, that gambling could happen on a moveable vessel only, because the river is considered neutral and nothing was allowed on the land at first.
When they opened, I had tickets for the 8 p.m. excursion, but the first trip at 6 p.m. went north, and the crew was unable to turn it around efficiently to come back on time.
Have a great week!