Elgin casino hopes smoking ban lift renews business

A proposal to lift an indoor smoking ban on Illinois casinos has Elgin's Grand Victoria Casino hopeful happy days are here again.

Earlier this week, the Illinois House approved a measure that would allow patrons to smoke while they gamble. They'd still offer nonsmoking sections and would need to go smoke free if casinos in surrounding states banned smoking. The measure now heads to the Senate for consideration.

Officials from the Grand Victoria said the smoking ban that went into effect at the start of 2008 is directly responsible for its declining revenues and subsequent downsizing. They welcome a change in the law that would allow indoor smoking.

“An exception for casinos would help us win back lost patrons and allow us to create more jobs and bring back employees that were laid off,” said Yvette Origel, the casino's director of marketing.

Figures from the Illinois Gaming Board show 204,174 people gambled at the state's most popular casino in January 2007, a year before the ban went into effect. Those numbers translated into $35,539,000 in revenue, of which the state receives half.

A year later, 182,030 patrons — an 11 percent drop from 2007 — brought $28,469,000 into the casino in January 2008. Year-to-year attendance figures continued to drop precipitously throughout 2008.

Attendance in January 2009 was 12 percent lower than a year earlier. And that trend carried throughout the year, for the most part, as the economy worsened.

While monthly totals throughout 2010 showed minor drops in attendance, it jumped 11 percent in January. But it dropped again 7 percent in January 2011.

If the state exempts casinos from the smoking ban, some patrons say it won't keep them off the boat.

“It doesn't make any difference to me,” said Harman Davis of Bellwood, who quit smoking five years ago and who says a smoky casino would not tempt him to start up again.

Others are mindful of the health implications a smoky place of business could have on casino employees.

While casino employees declined to comment on the pending legislation, casino patron August Milz had plenty to say on their behalf.

The Elgin man said he goes to the Grand Victoria once a week or so with his wife. Several years ago, he launched an e-mail campaign in which he and friends badgered legislators into approving the ban.

He said that if the state were to grant exemptions to casinos for smoking that he would quit going altogether — his younger sister almost died of lung cancer as a result of being a smoker.

“I can't conceive of why anyone would want to go back to a medieval environment like that,” Milz said. “People hate to work in a smoking environment.”