Lee Acebedo, chairman of Jamul Indian Village, says a proposed casino on the property would create 1,900 new jobs and generate millions of dollars in wages and benefits for the community.

Motorists traveling southeast on two-lane Highway 94 in East County will see the signs long before they reach the Jamul Indian Village. They are strung out along the sides of the roadway — some bent or broken by vandals.

But the wording remains clear. In big yellow letters they shout:

“No Casino in Jamul. No!”

The signs were erected by the Jamul Action Committee, a volunteer citizens group that has been waging a fight against a casino in the 14,000-residential community for the past 14 years.

In 1992, the committee and other residents opposed a plan by Jamul Indian Village leaders and Station Casinos to build a 10-story gaming complex on the six-acre village property. The land houses tribal offices, homes for tribal members and a Catholic church and cemetery. That proposal was ultimately abandoned, but another one has taken its place. And it’s just as controversial, if not more so.

Armed with a gaming compact from the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, Jamul Indian Village and development partner Lakes Entertainment are pushing a plan to build a 30-story casino and hotel complex on the tiny tribal village land. Although Indian leaders have yet to satisfy the state’s demand for an environmental review of the project, they put together a groundbreaking event late last year that drew more than 1,000 people who were treated to food, drink and ceremonial dances. The event might have satisfied the appetites of the people who attended, but it got local opponents steaming mad again.

“We’re all just tired of it,” says longtime resident Marcia Spurgeon about the years of conflict with the Indians. Spurgeon sits on the local school board and belongs to the Jamul Action Committee. She says a casino of that size — any size — will ruin the rural character of Jamul and result in unmanageable problems with traffic, emergency services, water, sewage and the environment.

Tribal chairman Lee Acebedo has heard those arguments before and says the Kumeyaay tribe is more than willing to work with residents and government agencies to satisfy their environmental and safety concerns. He is mad, too, he says, because the tribe has been waiting for more than six years for the federal government to approve its request to place in trust 80 acres adjacent to the village. That acreage was purchased by Lakes Entertainment and was to be used to build housing and other services for tribal members while a far less obtrusive low-rise casino and hotel complex could be built on the tribe’s original six acres.

County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, an outspoken opponent of Jamul Indian Village’s casino plan, says it will create traffic, safety and environmental problems for the rural community.

Acebedo says the tribe got tired of waiting and went back to its original plan to build a casino and hotel on its Highway 94 property. But the size of the project grew considerably — a 30-story structure — since only about four acres of land is available to build on. “When you put everything on those acres — we’re looking at a wastewater treatment plant, six or seven levels of parking, five or six levels of gaming and support offices — when you add a hotel to it, and you want to have 300 to 400 rooms, it is going to go up,” he says.

Dressed in a white polo shirt adorned with the round patch of the Jamul Indian Village, Acebedo explains his position to visitors: “This land is in trust. We’re a sovereign nation. We have jurisdiction over this six acres. The groundbreaking was ceremonial. It was demonstrating both to the public and our tribal members that we fully intend to move forward with our project.” He says he wants to be able to open the casino by December 2007.

Some 10 miles away, in her field office in the East County Regional Center in El Cajon, Supervisor Dianne Jacob aligns herself squarely with casino opponents. “To put a 30-story monstrosity right smack dab in the middle of a rural community is out of sync with the character of the community,” says Jacob, who lives in Jamul’s Steele Canyon, about five miles away from the Indian property.

Jacob is preaching casino consolidation, where one gaming tribe invites a nongaming tribe onto its property to operate a gaming facility. Acebedo dismisses that idea with a wave of his hand. “That’s not anything we would consider,” he says. “As long as we have land that we can work with, we will do so.”

More Casinos On The Way

Viejas Casino in Alpine earlier this year topped off its latest expansion which featured a new west entrance.

While Jamul Indian Village struggles with its neighbors, other Indian tribes in the county are carrying out casino plans of their own or using gaming revenues for non-gaming development projects and business ventures.

The Santa Ysabel Band of Diegueño Indians broke ground last December on a 70,000-square-foot casino on Highway 79 near Lake Henshaw that will contain 349 slot machines, 14 card tables and a restaurant. The casino is expected to open in March 2007, says Tina Lentz, spokewoman for Majestic Gaming LLC, which would operate the casino. The project is financed by the Yavapai-Apache Nation of Arizona. An Indian-owned company based in Alaska, Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corp., or UIC, is the contractor. Lentz says bungalows may be added at a later time.

The Yavapai-Apache Nation also helped finance a 20,000-square-foot casino for the La Posta Band of Mission Indians that broke ground in January on its East County reservation. Tribal spokesman James Hill says the casino will be built for under $20 million and will contain 349 slot machines and an undetermined number of card tables. He expects the casino to be open by the end of the year and to employ about 105 people. The tribe is one of the smallest in the county with 11 adult members and 15 children.

Not far behind with construction is the 704-member La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, which expects to break ground this year on a $25 million to $30 million casino at Highway 76 in Pauma Valley with 349 slot machines, 12 gaming tables and hotel. The tribe operates a campground on the reservation that was closed in the winter. It is expected to resume operations in the summer. Tribal Chairman Tracy Nelson says the tribe shut down the 30 slot machines that it had been operating in an arcade in anticipation of the new construction and has been working with Caltrans to improve traffic access to the site.

Also slated for construction this year is a new $300 million hotel and casino in Pauma Valley for the Pauma Band of Mission Indians under a development pact with Peter Morton’s Las Vegas-based Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. The complex, featuring 2,000 slot machines, restaurants, an entertainment venue and 300 hotel rooms, would replace the tribe’s existing casino.

Other gaming tribes are venturing far beyond their reservations to pursue nongaming ventures made possible by revenues derived from their casinos. El Cajon’s Sycuan Band, which purchased Downtown San Diego’s U.S. Grant Hotel in 2003 for $45 million and later closed it to undertake a $52 million restoration, expects to hold a grand reopening in November (see related story). The tribe also wants to build a $30 million hotel, conference center and restaurant complex in National City with financial partners.

Separately, Sycuan unveiled a $55 million capital improvement program last year that includes the construction of a $40 million, five-level parking garage for 2,000 vehicles at its El Cajon casino, a $3.5 million project to widen the road leading to the casino and a $2.2 million project to construct a two-mile water line from a Padre Dam Municipal Water District pipeline to supply water to 17 new tribal homes on the land that was previously occupied by the Big Oak Ranch. The tribe purchased the ranch property about five years ago.

The Viejas tribe, Sycuan’s East County neighbor, partnered with Federal Development of Washington, D.C., in December to win exclusive negotiating rights with the San Diego Unified Port District for the development of a new cruise ship terminal, hotels, restaurants and other related amenities in Downtown’s North Embarcadero at a projected cost of more than $575 million. The board of port commissioners is scheduled to receive an April 4 staff report on the status of negotiations with the development team, called Federal Viejas.

Federal Viejas pegs the cost of a cruise ship terminal at the B Street Pier at $81 million, to be accompanied by a 750-space parking facility. A 977,000-square-foot hotel tower with meeting rooms, restaurants and retail space is proposed for the south end at a cost of more than $200 million. Future phases would include another hotel, restaurants and retail space on the north end at a similar cost, an eight-story public parking facility costing $54 million and a $14 million retail building at the B Street Pier. More commercial space is proposed for the Navy property at 1220 Pacific Highway. The developer would have to pay the Navy $26.5 million to relocate its facilities.

Viejas, which owns Borrego Springs Bank and has stakes in hotels in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., topped off a 48,000-square-foot expansion of its Alpine casino in January, adding 260 new slot machines, two lounge areas, a 25-seat bar, recycling center and a new west side entrance. It is negotiating with the neighboring Ewiiaapaayp Tribe to add another casino on the reservation. Unrelated to gaming was its purchase last summer of a 50 percent stake in the Broadcast Company of the Americas, which operates XX Sports Radio and KASH Radio 1700-AM.

Off-Reservation Plans

The Viejas tribe, which grew a modest bingo hall of the 1980s into a multimillion-dollar gaming and business corporation, is lending its financial clout to the Manzanita Indian Band’s proposal to build an off-reservation casino in the Imperial County border city of Calexico. The two tribes financed a successful ballot referendum last June that gives them the right to negotiate a casino development agreement with the city. They are looking at several possible sites in Calexico for a $175 million casino with 2,000 slot machines and a 200-room hotel. Similarly, the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians, a San Diego County tribe located in Warner Springs, is seeking a casino development in Barstow.

Although federal law generally bars tribes from using off-reservation lands for gaming, an exemption would allow such ventures with the approval of local government, the governor and the Secretary of the Interior. Manzanita also would have to obtain a revised gaming compact with the state.

How far these initiatives will go is uncertain. Bills introduced in Congress last month would eliminate the exemption allowing off-reservation gaming. The measures also would place restrictions on tribes who don’t have enough reservation land for casinos.

Jamul Indians Cry Foul

Signs like this one are on the side of Highway 94 leading to the Jamul Indian Village.

Jamul Indian Village Chairman Acebedo expresses dismay about the delays his tribe has encountered while other tribes with state compacts have moved forward. “What we are doing is nothing new,” he says. “It is exactly what nine other tribes in San Diego County thus far have done: secure a tribal-state compact and build a casino on our reservation in strict observance of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and all other relevant federal laws.”

Yet Jacob and other opponents contend a casino in the rural community is wrong for several reasons. “Highway 94 is a very dangerous road and there are no plans for expansion to relieve the current traffic situation,” she says. “You’ve got three schools within a four-mile radius. When you’ve got kids involved and traffic and safety issues, I and others become very, very concerned.”

Opponents also argue that a casino would degrade a 4,800-acre ecological preserve contiguous to the tribe’s property. “State fish and game has ownership and management of that land and they are very much against having a casino on the site because of the edge affects the casino would cause,” says Jacob.

Acebedo argues that for the past several years the tribe has offered to put up $30 million for improvements to Highway 94, law enforcement and fire protection, including $22 million to build, equip and staff a new fire station. “Our mitigation package is three times larger than those offered by any other tribe in San Diego County,” he says. “It is an offer that is still on the table. Meanwhile, the county continues to negotiate deals with other tribes for far less money.”

The tribe says a Jamul casino would create 1,900 new jobs and generate tens of millions of dollars in wages and benefits, improving significantly the local economy, and provide tribal members with a self-sufficiency they’ve never had before. Jacob argues that the 17 tribal families receive $1.1 million annually in revenue sharing from gaming tribes. “You divide that up among 17 families and that’s an income of over $60,000 a year per family for doing nothing,” she says. “I’m sure that other families in San Diego would welcome the opportunity of having that kind of income and not have to work for it. To me, this is not about self-sufficiency; it’s about greed.”

Jacob argues that casino consolidation is a better answer, although federal legislation is required before any shared casino developments can be built.

Acebedo remains unconvinced. “There are a lot of questions about that concept of casino consolidation that have not been answered,” he says. “Even the Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn’t have answers. They don’t have any regulations, they don’t even know how to do it themselves. I anticipate that consolidation is a long way off. We are going to be open way before they solve that problem.”