Approval of homeland for Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians clears path for casino

A Cloverdale tribe received official notice Friday from the federal government that its longstanding request to create a reservation on 62 acres of land had been approved, a decision that a tribal representative described as a major step toward developing a third tribal casino in Sonoma County.

The federal approval, which delighted leaders of the 540-member Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians, sets up the possibility of another prolonged local dispute with opponents of casino development, including the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

The county issued its own announcement late Friday saying that supervisors would review “legal options” following the decision. A closed-door hearing on the matter is set for Tuesday.

Tribal spokesman Rob Muelrath, meanwhile, said Cloverdale Rancheria leaders viewed the news as a “massive step forward” in their plans for economic development on their new homeland immediately southeast of the Cloverdale city limits.

Those plans have called for a 575,600-square-foot casino-resort complex, including a 244-room hotel up to five stories high and a convention and entertainment center priced at $320 million.

At that scope, the project would compete with the county’s largest gaming facility, the $800 million Graton Resort and Casino, which is currently adding a hotel and convention space.

The county’s first tribal casino, the 14-year-old River Rock Casino near Geyserville, has seen its own revenues cut in half since the Graton casino opened in November 2013 near Rohnert Park.

Muelrath, a Santa Rosa-based political consultant, said he could not comment on the scope of the planned Cloverdale project, which he said will be determined in an “ongoing dialogue” between the tribe and local government

“They want to be part of the community; they want to be good neighbors,” he said.

Bay Area patrons of the proposed Cloverdale casino would have to drive to the northern end of Sonoma County, about 35 miles past the Graton complex - owned by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria - also bypassing River Rock, owned by the Dry Creek Rancheria of Pomo Indians, in Alexander Valley.

There are also seven smaller Indian casinos in Mendocino County and four in Lake County.

Experts have said the North Bay casino marketplace may be oversaturated and the Cloverdale tribe may have difficulty financing the project, which has been in the works since 2007. The tribe said then it had partnered with Sealaska, a Juneau-based Native American corporation, to buy the land, finance the project and manage it.

The 62-acre site is located at the south end of Cloverdale, adjacent to Highway 101 and Asti Road.

Cloverdale and county officials said they were surprised by the Interior Department’s announcement, having expressed concerns in the past about the scope of the Cloverdale Pomo project, described by attorneys for the city as “behemoth” and “gargantuan.”

The Board of Supervisors has “consistently opposed taking the land into trust for gaming purposes,” Chairman Efren Carrillo said in a written statement. The county will be “reviewing our legal options to determine the best course of action to ensure the community does not bear the cost of the casino project impacts,” he said.

But the federal action of essentially taking ownership of the tribe’s land removes its development from city and county jurisdiction, County Counsel Bruce Goldstein said. Tribes are not bound by local laws or land use plans, such as the county general plan or zoning code.

It would be “very difficult” to obtain mitigation of off-reservation impacts without an agreement with the tribe, Goldstein said. The county’s options include negotiating such an agreement or filing a legal challenge to the Interior Department’s action, but the casino might be built before the case is resolved, he said. The third option would be to do nothing, he said.

After Friday, the Cloverdale tribe faces one more significant and mandatory bureaucratic hurdle to its proposed casino: negotiating a gaming compact with Gov. Jerry Brown. Muelrath said that process has not started.

The tribe’s application to the Interior Department to have its land taken into trust and made sovereign homeland listed several alternative development projects, including one with a 150,000-square foot casino and no hotel, convention center or entertainment center, and another with industrial, office and retail space and no gaming facilities.

The restored homeland is contiguous to the tribe’s original 28-acre reservation, some of which was sold to the state of California and is now used for Highway 101, according to acting Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Larry Roberts. He noted the “repugnant and failed” U.S. policy that stripped many tribes of their reservation land in the 20th century. For the Cloverdale tribe, all that remained was their cemetery and tribal well, Roberts said.

Federal recognition of the tribe was restored in 1983. “Thirty-three years later, the repudiated termination still impacts the tribe as it has no trust land to call home,” Roberts said. “That changes today.”

Restoration of tribal lands will position the tribe, with about one-fourth of its families in poverty or low-income status, “to achieve long-term and stable economic development” and promote the “health and safety of its citizens,” Roberts said.

Still, county Supervisor James Gore, whose district includes the casino site, said he was disappointed by the Interior Department’s handling of the tribe’s trust application.

The county’s concerns “were largely ignored and we were kept in the dark and informed only after the decision was made,” Gore said Friday in the county statement.

The lack of consultation “creates a situation in which local governments and tribal governments are unnecessarily pitted against each other,” he said.

Cloverdale Mayor Mary Ann Brigham said the city had also sought an opportunity to express its concerns over the tribal project. But, she said, “it’s a done deal” and there is “no point in getting upset about it.”

Brigham said her goal is to “make the best project possible for the whole community.” The mayor said she has known most tribal members for years.

“I’ve watched most of them grow up,” she said.

She said that a legal challenge would be “pointless,” but also said “there will be factions in this community that will fight it to the bitter end.”

Previous plans by the Cloverdale Pomos in 1993 to build a $75 million casino at Fountaingrove, north of Santa Rosa, and in 1995 at a site near Petaluma, ran into stiff opposition and eventually collapsed.

Plans for River Rock, the county’s first casino, were unveiled three days after state voters legalized Indian gaming in 2000, when a Las Vegas casino designer and the Dry Creek band of Pomo Indians announced their goal of building a hilltop facility on the tribe’s 75-acre reservation overlooking Alexander Valley.

The project generated immediate controversy, which amped up in 2002 when a tribal official said that dirt moving work on the reservation was limited to development of roads, water and sewage treatment systems as well as the preparation of five new homes. It was, in fact, the start of the casino.

The county’s experience with the Graton casino in Rohnert Park was smoother, as the tribe reached an agreement with the city that included multimillion-dollar annual payments to mitigate the project’s impacts. Other tribes criticized the Graton Rancheria for making excessive concessions on a project it had the right to build.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.