California’s Big Sandy Rancheria hasn’t not given up on its plans for a second casino, although the tribe has been trying for more than ten years.
The tribe, located in central California, in Fresno County, has put the 40 acres known as the McCabe Allotment into trust. It would like to build a casino that would be much larger than its existing casino, the Mono Wind Casino, which has 349 slots and is located in Auberry.
It proposes a $100 million casino with a 221-room hotel, 2,000 slots and 40 gaming tables.
The proposal is controversial because the land is 12 miles away from the original reservation, near the town of Friant. The last action taken by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was to issue a draft environmental impact statement in 2011.
It declined to include the land in a land consolidation plan. Another problem is that the property is near the Table Mountain Rancheria, owners of Table Mountain Casino. It opposes the second casino.
Further, the project is complicated by the fact that the rancheria is being sued by a party identified as Brownstone LLC, which loaned the tribe money to help develop the Mono Wind Casino. The lawsuit seeks $572,699 from the tribe, claiming that the tribe paid back only $482,301 of the $1 million that it borrowed.
Nevertheless Chairman Elizabeth Kipp declares of the second casino, “it is not dead.”
