Bally’s Chicago tops out on the former Tribune printing plant site

Bally's Chicago reached a visible construction milestone this week, celebrating the topping out of its permanent casino at 705 West Chicago Avenue. Urbanize Chicago reported on May 4 that the final structural beam was placed for the $1.7 billion project, which is planned to open in spring 2027.

The site carries a longer industrial and media history than the new casino renderings can show on their own. It is the former Chicago Tribune Freedom Center landscape, a large North Branch production site now being recast as a casino, hotel, theater, restaurant, parking, and riverwalk destination. The topping out marks the moment when that change becomes unmistakable in the skyline of River West.

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A former printing plant site is now a structural frame for the next North Branch economy.

What Happened This Week

Urbanize reported that Bally's Chicago celebrated the topping out of the permanent casino complex, with Mayor Brandon Johnson, Alderman Walter Burnett Jr., Bally's leadership, labor representatives, Chicago Community Builders Collective, and construction workers attending the event.

The planned complex includes a 500-room hotel tower, a 3,000-seat theater, 10 food and beverage venues, a two-acre public park, and a seven-story casino building. The lower riverbank is expected to connect to an approximately 2,000-foot extension of the riverwalk.

Why The Site Reading Changes

The topping out is a threshold in the reuse story of a major industrial river parcel. The former printing plant no longer reads primarily as a cleared site or entitlement debate. It is now a vertical construction project with a specific public-facing shape along Chicago Avenue and the river.

The project also makes the North Branch's changing identity sharper. A corridor once defined by production, freight, utilities, and service yards is being rewritten through residential, entertainment, office, and open-space projects. Bally's is one of the largest examples of that shift.

What To Watch Next

The next useful records will be facade installation, riverwalk construction, hotel-tower progress, park details, parking access, and how the site handles the edge between casino operations and public riverfront space.

Documentation should hold onto the industrial predecessor as the new structure rises. Without that comparison, the project risks being read only as a casino story rather than as one of Chicago's largest conversions of a former media-production landscape.