Although the city of Temecula and the Pechanga Indian Tribe have reached a government-to-government agreement on mitigation for a 5 million expansion for the Pechanga Resort & Casino, it still needs to hammer out an agreement with Riverside County. The resort is already one of the largest in California.
The tribe plans to expand the resort by 800,000 square feet over 42 acres. It can’t begin that work until it reaches an agreement with the county. It will add 568 hotel rooms in two towers, several new restaurants, an outdoor arena and a 3,000-seat ballroom.
The city council approved of the agreement on November 17, opening the way for the tribe to pay for road improvements and public safety. It continues a string of agreements that city and tribe have reached since the tribe threw up temporary casino structures in July 1995. From those humble beginnings the tribe added a convenience store and RV park and in 2002 opened the permanent casino with a 517-room hotel. It later added a golf course and various tribal buildings. The reservation is just outside the city boundaries.
Temecula Mayor Jeff Comercerho declared, “We’ve had a great relationship with the Pechanga tribe.” Some city officials have attributed Temecula’s wide recognition to its association with the casino resort, which was recently ranked number one in the U.S. by a USA Today readers’ poll.
The mayor has happily compared the planned resort to the best in Nevada. “It really will be a Las Vegas style resort,” he said at a recent board meeting.
The tribe and city’s agreement calls for $2 million each year to the city for the next 21 years to help pay for additional traffic impacts and to pay for more police and fire services. About $10 million of that money is being earmarked to relocate freeway on and off ramps at Interstate 15 and Temecula Parkway, where increasingly gridlock is being created by casino traffic.
The interchange improvements have been in the works for at least a decade with a price tag expected to be about $51 million to acquire land, build and administer to the project. Because the county and tribe have yet to reach an agreement the work has not begun.
This caused friction between the city and tribe and prompted the city to sue in 2011 to try to break the logjam. Its suit was rejected in federal court and city and tribal leaders quickly jumped into repairing relations. The city opted against filing an appeal and instead worked with the tribe to deal with common issues, including their common opposition to a granite mine that was proposed near the city and near a tribal sacred site. They were able to kill the project when the tribe worked out a deal to buy the property, and the city now celebrates the November 15 day when that agreement was signed as Pu’eska Mountain Day.
Since then the tribe has contributed over $14 million to work on freeway entrances and exits.
Butch Murphy, a tribal leader who helped work on the new agreement, characterized it as “a monumental agreement. We’re happy. The city’s happy. It’s a good place to start.”
