The corporate owner of the Par-A-Dice Hotel Casino has received permission to move forward with its plan to redevelop the existing East Peoria site.
The Illinois Gaming Board on Thursday unanimously approved Boyd Gaming’s proposal to upgrade the facility and relocate the casino floor to a permanently barge on the Illinois River.
This comes after the Nevada-based company revised its original plan to move the casino inland, with the new gambling space built on top of a basin with water drawn from the river.
The City of Peoria objected to that proposal, pointing to a 1991 intergovernmental agreement with the City of East Peoria, and an update to the Illinois Gaming Act, that required any land-based casino in the region to be built within Peoria city limits.
