Mashpee Wampanoags scale down casino plan

Tribal Council vice chairman Aaron Tobey said it was too soon to give hard details. Plans won’t be formalized until the tribe is within six months to a year of construction.

“Realistically, that’s when we will do a feasibility study,” Tobey said. “We are not going to transplant Vegas into Middleborough. We’ll do something that represents the tribe and the town.” Tobey added that the tribe wants to see an adequate return on investment and wishes “to do something affordable.”

The Middleborough Resort Advisory Committee met with tribe officials two days ago. “They gave every indication the project will move forward, but on a smaller scale than before,” Chairman Eric Cederholm said. “They gave no hard details, but said they would use a phased-in approach, I got the impression that until they have their own issues worked out, a lot is still up in the air.”

Payments to the town, based on the 2007 agreement approved by Middleborough voters, are tied, to some extent, to the size of the casino operation. The town will get $7 million annually plus 4 percent of hotel revenue. That latter amount was expected to drive the yearly total above $10 million.

Middleborough Selectmen Chairman Patrick Rogers said his board had been previously told by Cromwell that the project would be downsized due to the economy, so it wasn’t a big surprise to hear about Monday’s discussion with the Resort Advisory Committee.

“The site will support future growth,” Rogers said. “For now, I would think they would build something suitable for the times. It makes good business sense.”

The tribe’s current obstacles include the shaky economy, a disagreement that has stopped the flow of cash from the casino investors to the Wampanoags, and a Supreme Court ruling, called the Carcieri decision, that bars land from being placed into federal trust for tribes recognized after 1934. The Mashpee tribe achieved federal recognition in 2007.

The Mashpee Wampanoags hope the issue related to the Carcieri decision may be addressed next month. Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell, along with representatives from other tribes, has been invited to meet with President Obama on Nov. 5.

“The Obama administration has been very committed to Indian country,” said Mashpee Wampanoag spokeswoman Brooke Scannell. “And the tribe is encouraged by what the Legislature is doing.”

Meanwhile, what Massachusetts lawmakers decide regarding slots at racetracks or commercial casinos will also impact the Wampanoags’ plans, Tobey said. Cromwell intends to advocate for his tribe during legislative hearings.

Tribal leaders have had no conversations with the Governor regarding their casino proposal, but Tobey said they hope their project will remain a frontrunner when casino licensing is discussed.

“We’d like to think that because we are natives and from Massachusetts, it would make good business sense to say the Wampanoag are the ones to get first consideration for a casino in Massachusetts,” Tobey said.

Regarding the current dispute over the casino agreement between the investors and the Mashpee Wampanoags, Scannell said both sides have pledged not to talk about ongoing negotiations. She added “negotiations are active and everybody is hopeful.” The principal investors are Sol Kerzner and Len Wolman.

Casino expert Clyde Barrow, a professor at UMass-Dartmouth’s Center for Policy Analysis, characterized the Wampanoags’ initial billion-dollar casino proposal as “a little over the top.”

“With talk of two or three resorts in the state and slots at the tracks, you would almost have to scale back the project,” Barrow said. “The average casino in Atlantic City is a $250 to $350 million operation. So what the tribe is talking about is the size of an Atlantic City casino. It’s not small.”

While the Wampanoags are scaling back their plans, developers hoping to build a casino in Milford some 40 miles away told that town's board of selectmen last night that they planned an ambitious project that would include casino, hotel rooms, a meeting and convention center, a nightclub and retail businesses.

Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com