The Shoshone Bannock Tribe will hold a referendum on a proposed $311 million, 500,000-square-foot casino near Mountain Home, Idaho on September 23.
Eligible voters must be Shoshone Bannock tribal members older than 21 who have lived on the reservation for the last year, said tribal spokesman Randy’L Teton. The tribe currently operates three casinos on its Fort Hall reservation near Pocatello in East Idaho.
The proposed casino would be built on 157 acres the tribe purchased for $1.67 million in 2020. In the past few months, the tribe has held outreach events to inform members and the public about the project, which would offer 2,000 electronic gaming machines, a 250-room hotel, six restaurants, 15,000-square-foot event center, 8-lane bowling alley, two movie theaters and an arcade. Plans also include a horse racing track with a grandstand.
If the referendum passes, enrolled members’ direct payments would cease for “a number of years” as gaming revenue would be used to pay off the debt to build the casino, officials said. They noted the tribe recently hired an environmental firm to study the Mountain Home property ahead of potential construction.
Before building starts, the land would have to be taken into federal trust. The governor of the state would have final approval.
Criticism has already begun, especially from the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, which is federally recognized but does not have a casino. According to tribal Chairman Brian Mason, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe has been eyeing a potential casino in Mountain Home since the 1990s. He said residents of the tribe’s Duck Valley Reservation do business in Mountain Home and have a closer relationship with the community than the East Idaho Shoshone-Bannock.
Mason said, “The ties and the partnerships between Duck Valley and Mountain Home are much greater between our reservation than theirs. To the tribe, it seems like an overstep by a larger Indian tribe that already has gaming to come into our backyard and try to bully us.”
He said the tribe sent a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, explaining it has partnered on the project with Oreana-based developer JTC Gaming LLC, which has been “involved in gaming operations in many states for many years” and has a full staff of gaming attorneys.
Mason said the Shoshone Bannock Tribe offered to partner with the Shoshone Paiute on a casino but their offer was rejected. Mason said the Shoshone Paiute want to establish their own casino to give tribal members more economic opportunities than a partnership. “We’re not trying to push weight around because we don’t really have any. We’re just trying to get something for the people,” he said.
