The $500 million casino that the Wilton Rancheria of northern California plans to build in the Elk Grove will probably have a groundbreaking sometime this year, according to Chairman Raymond Hitchcock.
The chairman, who was interviewed by the Elk Grove Citizen about the tribe’s longstanding aspirations, said it is likely the casino would open by the end of 2020. The casino will be about 36 miles from Sacramento, the state capitol, making it the closest Indian casino to that city, and the first Indian casino in Sacramento County. The casino will be built and managed for the tribe by Boyd Gaming.
Hitchcock told the Citizen, “We’ll keep everyone posted on our progress, and plans to break ground on this exciting project, which will create thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in community investments, and which, after decades of struggle, will put our tribe on the path to self-sufficiency.”
Hitchcock added, “There’s no definitive date yet, but we’re looking at early 2019 to begin this process, and it’s slated for completion by late 2020.” He noted that preparation for the site began shortly after the New Year. “As planned, we have begun pile load testing as we continue to move the project forward toward construction.” In such a process piles are drilled into the ground to test their load bearing capacity.
The development comes at the end of a long road that began when the tribe was recognized in 2009 by the federal government, after many years of its status as a tribe being in limbo.
Last year the tribe’s casino management contract with Boyd Gaming was approved by the Department of the Interior and its tribal state gaming compact for a Class III casino went into effect. All of the legal challenges to the tribe’s right to build a casino were also resolved in the tribe’s favor.
The tribe’s 36 acres in the unfinished Outlet Collection at Elk Grove mall along Highway 99 was put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2017, and that decision was unsuccessfully challenged in federal court by opponents that included the casino watchdog group Stand Up for California and three residents of the city of Elk Grove.
They argued that the Bureau of Indian Affairs official who put the land into trust at the end of the Obama Administration and beginning of the Trump Administration was not authorized to do so.
Hitchcock told the Citizen, “There have been many assertions that the land was not properly put into trust. We were 100 percent confident the whole time, and everything was done appropriately and by how the federal government has their processes put up to put land into trust, and it was done accordingly.”
The tribe has agreements with the city of Elk Grove and Sacramento County to invest in excess of $180 million for 20 years once the casino is operating. The money will be used to improve infrastructure, enhance traffic, promote education and give grants to community programs.
Hitchcock told the Citizen, “We’ve always utilized the resources that the county and city provide, and now we have an opportunity to give back and be a contributing part of the goodwill that these nonprofit organizations have provided not only to ourselves, but others in the area.”
The tribe plans to do many things for its members once the casino money starts to flow in. They include medical and dental care, building an elder center to provide services for senior members, expanding cultural and heritage education and assisting tribal members to find and buy affordable housing.
The chairman said he was disappointed that apparently the Elk Grove outlet mall will not be completed as had been promised by the owners, the Howard Hughes Corporation, whose development agreement with the city of Elk Grove recently expired. “Our project does not hinge on what they do or don’t do, but we would sure love to see the outlet facility built as promised for the citizens of Elk Grove who had to endure a ghost mall for the last decade-plus,” he said.
