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Tribes bet on Portlanders

Cowlitz deal with a Connecticut gambling giant raises stakes in metro-area casino race

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Aug 17, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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The wheel is spinning, and Portland’s gambling market is the jackpot.

The Cowlitz Tribe already had prime casino property Ñ 30 minutes north of downtown Portland, just off Interstate 5. Now they’ve got money, too. They’re partnering with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, a gambling giant that has raked in more than a billion dollars in gambling-related revenue during the past nine months.

Meanwhile, 45 minutes east of downtown, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs eagerly await groundbreaking of a 500,000-square-foot casino resort that would lure an estimated 3 million visitors per year.

All of which is making the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Ñ sitting on the biggest tourist gold mine in Oregon, but more than an hour southwest of the city center Ñ increasingly nervous. Grand Ronde leaders have failed twice in the past year to gain approval for a tribal casino in downtown Portland. Now they are left watching two potentially formidable competitors place their bets.

The lucrative world of tribal gaming, worth $16.7 billion last year nationally, is inching closer and closer to Portland. And the stakes are high.

On the one hand, the proposed casinos could improve the lives of thousands of impoverished tribal members and boost the regional economy. On the other hand, tribal casinos are not required to pay taxes or obey local land-use laws, giving them an enormous advantage over taxpaying businesses as well as the state’s gambling operations, which provide much-needed public revenue.

Of course, the tribes coveting Portland’s gambling market will have to win quite a few hands before they cash in.

The long-dispossessed Cowlitz, who were only officially recognized as a tribe in January 2002, must overcome opposition from residents and business owners in La Center, Wash., where the tribe hopes to build. The Cowlitz would also have to negotiate a gaming compact with Washington state and gain approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to turn their land into a reservation with a casino.

The Warm Springs tribes must win over Columbia River Gorge preservationists, cut a deal with Gov. Ted Kulongoski and convince the federal government that industrial property in the Port of Cascade Locks should be converted into an off-reservation casino.

As for the Grand Ronde, owners of Spirit Mountain Casino east of Lincoln City, they remain a long shot in Portland Ñ so long as Oregon keeps its mandate of one tribe, one casino.

All three entities are investing heavily in lawyers, economists, architects and public relations.

An innovative partnership

The Cowlitz Indians have existed for centuries in the vicinity of the Cowlitz River, which runs from Mount Rainier southwest to Longview, Wash. But because their leaders refused to sign a treaty in 1855, it took them years of lobbying to win tribal rights.

They announced their partnership with the Mohegan Tribe on July 28.

The Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn., has 6,300 slot machines, 30 shops, 29 restaurants, a 34-story hotel and a million-dollar glass piece by artist Dale Chihuly. Fiscal documents estimate the tribe’s gross revenues for the nine months ended June 30 at $1 billion.

David Barnett, a former Cowlitz tribal council member and son of longtime tribal chairman John Barnett, put together the deal with the Mohegan.

“I had done an extensive search and interview process both with large Nevada gaming companies and other gaming businesses,” David Barnett said. “When I went back to Connecticut to meet the Mohegan tribal members, I was sold on their business sense, their success, and their honesty and integrity.”

The initial Mohegan investment of about $6.5 million is small by tribal gaming standards, as is the 41,000-square-foot, 425-slot-machine casino first outlined in Cowlitz documents. But experts note that such projects have a tendency to expand dramatically, once approval is won and markets are tapped.

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