With a recently signed settlement with the state of Arizona ending the longstanding conflict over the Desert Diamond Casino in its corporate pocket, the Tohono O’odham Gaming Enterprise has announced that it will begin building the 0 million resort and casino near Glendale by the end of 2017.
The 1 million square foot resort will include five restaurants, bars and a Las Vegas style casino double the size of the current facility. Building is expected to take less than two years to complete. The new casino itself will be 75,000 SF, compared to 35,000. It will offer slots and table games.
The tribe and state had battled in the courts since 2009, although consistently the tribe came out on top. Nevertheless, the state had found a way to create a significant problem for the casino when it refused to certify the tribe’s Class III slots, which meant that the tribe could only offer Class II games when it opened the Desert Diamond Casino in 2015, while it took the state to court again. That meant it was limited to bingo-based slots and no table games. During that battle, the state also denied the casino a liquor license.
In May Governor Doug Ducey and the tribe announced an accord that ended that battle, and cleared the path for the tribe to create its full-blown resort, which will be north of the existing casino. Once it opens the old casino will be turned into a warehouse. The new compact does require that the tribe no open any further casinos in the Phoenix metro area.
Andy Asselin, chief executive officer of the gaming enterprise, hailed the development: “This has been a long time coming, and we will continue to work with the community to ensure that construction proceeds smoothly.”
The long legal struggle had also included several rival gaming tribes, who claimed that the tribe had violated an agreement made in 2002 not to build a casino in Phoenix valley.
The Tohonos argued that they had a right to buy and build on land in the West Valley with money from a land settlement from the U.S. government, which paid for inundating the tribe’s original reservation when it built a dam on the Gila River.
In 2003 the tribe bought the land near Glendale, a year after the state’s voters approved tribal gaming and a compact that other tribes believed, and the state asserted, would prevent such casino. However, in subsequent court cases, judges ruled that while the Tohonos might have privately assured other tribal leaders that they would never build a casino in the Phoenix valley, nothing in the compact prevented them from doing so.
Early last year the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the casino met federal law and the 2002 gaming compact. The agreement in May ended all further legal challenges.
