Video Gaming in Chicago's 30th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Belmont Cragin, Irving Park and Portage Park were old settlements of Jefferson Township, which Chicago annexed in 1889. Irving Park began as a railroad suburb. Charles T. Race and his partners bought farmland in 1869 and built a depot so Chicago & North Western trains would stop there. They first called it Irvington, for the author Washington Irving, then Irving Park, and Grayland grew up around a Milwaukee Road station. A residential boom between 1895 and 1914 added more than 5,000 buildings.

Belmont Cragin grew around work. Its first business was a saloon serving truck farmers hauling produce to the city. The Cragin Brothers tin plate plant, and the factories the railroads drew after it, brought Swedish, German and Irish workers, then Poles and Italians. Builders filled the blocks with bungalows, Cape Cods and two-flats. In the 1980s and 1990s the Hispanic population grew, and Polish immigrants and businesses arrived too.

Portage Park, named for an old portage along what is now Irving Park Road, stayed a quiet suburban community until the Milwaukee streetcar line opened in 1907.

The area today

Ald. Ruth Cruz represents the 30th Ward from a ward office at 5418-A W. Belmont Ave. Cruz won a close runoff on April 4, 2023, to succeed Ald. Ariel Reboyras, who retired after 20 years on the City Council. The ward takes in, roughly, parts of Belmont Cragin, Irving Park, Portage Park and Avondale on the Northwest Side.

Metra's Milwaukee District North line stops at Grayland, 3729 N. Kilbourn St. A few blocks south, Kilbourn Park covers 11.43 acres at 3501 N. Kilbourn Ave., and the Park District calls it its only park with a teaching greenhouse. Belmont Avenue's commercial corridor runs through the ward, and the 31st Ward shares it.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Belmont Avenue, you work a corridor two wards share. The Belmont-Central Shopping and Business District, near Central and close to the 31st Ward line, is served by Special Service Area 2. The Encyclopedia of Chicago says Belmont-Central was built in the 1940s with a dozen stores and a parking lot, and that the CTA extended its Belmont bus service past Central. In Irving Park, businesses grew up along the major roads. The Portage Park Chamber of Commerce was designated SSA 2's sole service provider effective January 1, 2026.