After more than three decades of floating on the Des Plaines River, Hollywood Casino Joliet — one of the state’s first riverboat casinos — is ready to welcome gamblers on dry land.
The new $185 million Hollywood Casino Joliet gained Gaming Board approval to open Monday at 4 p.m. in the Rock Run Collection, a sprawling 310-acre mixed-use development taking shape next to the busy Interstate 80 and Interstate 55 interchange.
The massive 189,000-square-foot casino complex features 1,000 slots, 43 table games, a new retail sportsbook, a 10,000-square-foot event center and celebrity chef restaurants, ushering in a new era of gaming in the southwest suburbs.
“It’s very different than being on a riverboat,” said Ruben Warren, general manager of Hollywood Casino Joliet. “The riverboat had two levels, it sat on water and it was 30 years old. This is a brand new build.”
Hollywood Casino Joliet, which broke ground on the new land-based complex in December 2023, shut down its riverboat for good July 29 to transition the gaming operations and set up shop in its new highly visible, high-traffic home.
Eschewing Vegas neon and glitz, the understated, low-slung casino looks right at home in a modern suburban shopping center, where Hollywood Joliet will be the anchor tenant amid restaurants, retailers, residences and a planned hotel.
Once inside, however, visitors will be dazzled by the new offerings, Warren believes. On Thursday, Hollywood Joliet hosted a media open house, offering a sneak peek of what visitors can expect when the new casino opens.
The 50,000-square-foot casino floor features new gaming tables, a dedicated baccarat room, a mix of new and vintage slot machines, and an expansive major league retail sportsbook with what Warren says is the largest big-screen bar TV in the Chicago area.
Beyond expanded gaming, the Joliet facility features a variety of new dining options that Warren believes will draw regional visitors, whether they like to bet with chips or just eat them.
Topping the list, celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis has partnered with Hollywood to launch Sorellina, a casual Italian restaurant.
De Laurentiis is hosting private events at the new restaurant on Tuesday and Wednesday night, where guests can dine and take selfies with the celebrity chef well known for hosting a series of shows on the Food Network cable channel. Tickets to the Sorellina by Giada dining events, which cost $150 each, are completely sold out.
Inside Sorrelina at the media event Thursday, Michael Speagle, president and COO of GDL Cucina, the parent company of Giada Restaurants, proudly showed off his rotating Marra Forni brick oven, which heats up to 650 degrees and cooks pizza in 90 seconds.
“We refer to this as our Ferrari,” Speagle said of the prominent oven at the center of the restaurant and the heart of its cuisine.
Hollywood Casino Joliet also has a new food hall featuring some Chicago culinary star power. Boulevard Food & Drink Hall will include the first suburban locations for Antique Taco and Pretty Cool Ice Cream, as well as Lucky Goat, a new burger restaurant by celebrity chef Stephanie Izard.
Izard, who opened the acclaimed West Loop restaurant Girl & the Goat in 2010 after becoming the first woman to win Bravo’s “Top Chef,” was on hand Thursday to offer samples of her elevated fast casual fare.
Menu items included such Izard creations as a Chili-Crunch Cheeseburger, a Chicken Sammie and Messy Fun Fries.
“We’re taking simple things like a fried chicken sandwich, burgers and french fries, but adding the type of flavors I love to use on all of my dishes,” Izard said. “So you’ve got some influences from all over, but in a way that’s very familiar, which I think is great.”
Izard has been in Joliet all week in preparation for the grand opening. She and her staff got ready for the media unveiling by stoking up with an item from her menu.
“We were drinking a bunch of milkshakes as a little pregame, so we’re excited,” Izard said.
With separate entrances from the casino, Warren said, the new food offerings will all be family friendly and accessible to nongamblers. The food hall will be open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day when the casino opens.
Another new attraction at Hollywood Casino Joliet is the ESPN Bet retail sportsbook with a giant 43-by-9-foot big screen TV for watching and/or wagering on your favorite teams from a front row of reclining black leather lounge chairs or nearby bar tables. There’s also new sports betting kiosks, an attached restaurant and private seating areas.
“We’ll be showcasing free UFC main event matches and of course, football season is right around the corner,” Warren said. “All of that can be viewed here on the biggest screen in Chicagoland.”
Hollywood Casino Joliet did a test run of the gaming floor Thursday night for invited guests, with state regulators on hand to monitor. The new land-based casino was licensed in time for a VIP event Sunday night and the full public opening Monday afternoon.
Launched in June 1992 as the Empress Casino, an actual riverboat that set sail from a newly built dock south of Joliet near Channahon, Hollywood Casino Joliet was once one of the busiest in the state.
Penn Entertainment, which owns Hollywood casinos in Joliet and Aurora, is investing hundreds of millions on each to join the ranks of the new land-based gambling palaces springing up in the Chicago area. The newcomers have quickly gained market share with improved accessibility and a host of amenities not available in a docked riverboat.
The new $360 million entertainment complex for Hollywood Casino Aurora, which is going up near I-88 and Chicago Premium Outlets mall with similar amenities to Joliet, is slated to open next year.
Much is at stake for Penn, which has owned the sister riverboat casinos for more than two decades.
In 2002 Penn acquired the Hollywood Casino chain, which then included the Aurora location and casinos in Mississippi and Louisiana. In 2005 Penn added the Empress Casino as part of its acquisition of Argosy Gaming. The Joliet casino was rebranded as Hollywood in 2009, after a fire destroyed its Egyptian-themed pavilion.
In recent years, the dated riverboats have been passed by newer casinos.
When Illinois legalized riverboat gambling 35 years ago, it meant driving to Joliet, Aurora and Peoria, paying an admission fee and taking a two-hour ride down a river on a floating casino.
In 1999 the state eliminated the cruising regulations, allowing casinos to remain docked or simply be built over water. Harrah’s Joliet became the first to ditch the boat in 2001, constructing a casino on barges connected to its pavilion.
Rivers Casino Des Plaines, which opened in 2011, was simply built over a 144,000-gallon human-made pool to qualify as a riverboat.
The state’s sweeping 2019 gambling expansion bill, which added everything from six new casinos to sports betting, took it one step further, allowing all casinos to be built on or moved to dry land. Rivers became the first to convert to a land-based casino, paying a $250,000 Gaming Board fee to expand over adjacent dry land in 2020.
The state’s newer casinos, including Bally’s Chicago, Wind Creek Chicago Southland and Hard Rock Rockford, are all land-based. While Rivers remains the state’s No. 1 casino, the newer land-based facilities are all among the top in revenue and admissions.
Through the first six months of 2025, the state’s 17 casinos have generated $954 million in adjusted gross receipts, up nearly $127 million or 15.3% over last year, according to Gaming Board data. The casinos totaled more than 7.6 million visitors, up 1.5 million or 24% year over year.
Most of that growth came from the opening of Wind Creek Chicago Southland in November, which has quickly become the second-busiest casino in the state behind perennial leader Rivers. During the first six months of 2025, Wind Creek topped $96 million in revenue and welcomed 1.1 million guests to its 70,000-square-foot casino and adjacent hotel in south suburban East Hazel Crest.
Rivers Casino generated nearly $250 million in adjusted gross receipts and saw nearly 1.5 million admissions through June, according to Gaming Board data.
Hollywood Joliet ranked ninth during the first six months with $43.4 million in revenue, but Warren expects business to boom with the planned opening Monday of the first land-based casino in the southwest suburbs.
“The barge was great back in the day,” Warren said. “But we put this new casino in the perfect high-traffic location, in an up-and-coming development with a bunch of cool food and entertainment, hotel product, residential product that’s going to be coming here. And we feel good about the future.”
