The Wyoming legislature is considering a bill that does a lot of things, but one thing that it might do is sometime down the line authorize a casino on Kelly Warm Springs on lands adjacent to the Grand Teton National Park.
The bill’s sponsors are Rep. Andy Schwartz and Senator Mike Gierau. Their bill HB 1294 would authorize land transfers and allow economic development of school trust parcels. These lands were deeded to the state when it became a state and are by law required to generate income for public schools.
Each township has two sections of one square mile each assigned to it.
The land in Kelly is one of those parcels. Lawmakers are studying ways to keep the parcel from being “locked into development.”
Schwartz told the Jackson Hole News, “I obviously don’t want to see a casino in Kelly. But I’m also on the bill because I think we need to find a way to improve our income stream coming off our state lands sections.”
The bill would study ways to make more money from trust parcels near Interstate highways near the state lines. The Kelly land doesn’t fit that description. It is a 650 acre parcel between Grand Teton National Park and the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It is also land that the federal government would love to acquire to make part of the national park. In 2010 the Interior Department spent $16 million on 86 acres near the Snake River and $45 million in 2016 that filled out the area with only the Kelly parcel left out.
Speaker of the House Steve Harshman, who wrote the bill. said he included the Kelly piece because it’s worth so much. He told News & Guide, “That parcel in Grand Teton, we’re not going to build anything on that. “But it’s worth more than $40 million. How do we maximize that?”
One way, he said, might be to trade it for forest land near Jackson Hole or the airport. Harshman is asking for proposals to suggest ways to get the maximum profit from the land. He added, “The worst deal we could do is sell it for 40 million bucks.”
A recent appraisal of the land valued it at $39 million, $7 million less than the last time the appraisal was done.
Conservation groups such as National Parks Conservation Association promise to fight any bill that allows the parcel to be developed. Some call even the thought of such a thing “sacrilegious.” Especially a commercial operation like a casino.
HB 294 certainly doesn’t do that, but sets up a process for accepting proposals for commercial and residential development or “limited gaming opportunities,” which the author specifies as slot machines, blackjack and poker.
Casino gaming is currently illegal in Wyoming.
Gierau calls the current bill innocuous. He told the News, “My point is, why don’t we just have a study?” Gierau said. “There are parcels in Teton County that are of high value, every single one of them. We want to be in the middle of that discussion and that’s why I signed onto the bill.”
