A rendering of Bally’s Chicago Casino and Bally’s CFO Bobby Lavan (Bally’s, Getty)
Bally’s has sold the 30 acres beneath the Freedom Center printing plant that it spent $200 million to buy last week.
The Chicago Tribune reported that Oak Street Real Estate Capital, a Chicago-based company, purchased the $200 million property from the Chicago area and offered to lease it back for the next 99 year. The deal will raise an additional $300 million for Bally’s to develop the $1.74 billion casino project.
“It’s just another step forward in making sure that the project is fully funded,” Bally’s chairman Soo Kim told the publication Monday.
Earlier this month, Bally’s said it planned to sell the land and lease it back in an effort to raise money to build the new casino project. There are 10 options to extend the 99-year lease by up to 20 years. Oak Street is expecting to earn approximately 8.5 percent annually from the lease.
Bally’s CFO Bobby Lavan said the new partnership will provide more liquidity for the casino project without Bally’s having to borrow from other capital markets.
Oak Street Capital specializes on sale-leasebacks. The company has assets totaling more than $18 million. Blue Owl Capital, a New York-based company that bought Oak Street last year for $950 million.
Bally’s operates other casinos on land it has lease-back agreements for. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biloxi, MS, and Bally’s Tiverton Casino & Hotel in Rhode Island are some of Bally’s leaseback properties that will generate about $635 million for the company.
Bally’s owns and manages 15 casinos across 10 states. The gaming company first moved into Illinois with its June 2021 purchase of Jumer’s Casino & Hotel in Rock Island for $120 million. The company later renamed the casino Bally’s Quad Cities.
— Victoria Pruitt
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