Some critics of the Koi Nation’s proposed $600 million casino in California’s Sonoma County say the Bay Area market may already be saturated.
The site the tribe has applied to put into trust is 68 acres in Windsor that it purchased recently for $12.3 million. It is 15 miles on Highway 101 from its nearest and largest competitor, the Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park, where it has operated since 2013.
University of Nevada Las Vegas professor of casino management Anthony Lucas thinks that the 7.75 million Bay Area market is plenty big enough to support another casino. He told the North Bay Business Journal, “I don’t think (oversaturation) will be an issue in the least. You have so much population up there.”
Koi Nation Chairman Darin Beltran agrees: “The Shiloh Resort & Casino is going to offer a different experience to customers, from the design of the facility to its integration with the natural environment, from an entirely non-smoking campus to the combination of dining, entertainment, gaming, and proximity to the Sonoma County wine country.” He told the Journal, “That’s a combination we believe would be appealing to a very wide range of customers, including first-time casino customers looking for a unique experience in a unique location as well as people who enjoy gaming and are looking for a different experience.”
It plans a 200-room hotel, which won’t have to pay the 12 percent transient occupancy taxes that other non-tribal hotels pay, so that will make it a money-maker from the start.
Kathryn Rand, of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy at the University of North Dakota, doesn’t think saturating the market is really a problem. “I will say market saturation has been predicted in legalized gambling over and over, but Americans demonstrate an insatiable appetite to gamble,” she told the Journal. “Tribal casinos don’t determine their market as much as federal law has determined it for them.”
David G. Schwartz, gaming historian and former director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, agrees. “Theoretically there is a limit to everything. The question is where is the limit?” He told the Journal, “Indian gaming tends to draw from a more local, regional clientele.”
The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria’s isn’t taking a live and let live approach with the Koi casino. It argues that the Koi have no ancestral connection to the land. Before the land can be put into trust the Koi will have to prove that connection to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Graton Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris said in a statement recently,
“The Koi Nation’s attempt to push through a proposal to jump into other tribes’ territory is wrong. Moreover, this is not the Koi Nation’s first attempt at reservation shopping.” He continued, “The consensus among ethnohistorians is that the Koi Nation’s ancestral roots are in the Lower Lake area of Lake County. This attempt by the Koi Nation to manufacture a connection to Sonoma County is an affront to Sonoma County tribes such as our own, who have an extensively documented presence here.”
Sonoma County is also home to the River Rock Casino in Geyserville, which has operated there for nearly two decades. However, Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau Executive Director Tim Zahner doesn’t believe that gaming is a major draw for visitors. Its way behind visiting the Wine Country and looking for cannabis growers.
He told the Journal, “Casinos kind of rank up there with golf and other activities that people can do while they’re here. That’s not to say that casinos aren’t a driver for some visitors, and especially day-trippers who come up just for the day, go to the casino and go back. There are a fair amount of people that do that from the Bay Area and Sacramento area. But for overnight visitors looking for a casino experience, it’s just too easy to get to Las Vegas or Reno. So we’re not the draw for that kind of experience at all. Our visitors ask us about cannabis more than they ask about casinos.”
