Native American Tribe Gets Approval To Build $500M Casino In MassachusettsMashpee Wampanoag Receive The Land Deal To Build The Property |
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A Native American tribe located in the state of Massachusetts has received the necessary approval from the federal government regarding land it wants to use for one of the Bay State’s new Las Vegas-style casinos.
The Mashpee Wampanoag, a federally recognized tribe with roughly 2,600 members, on Friday saw the the U.S. Department of Interior agree to take 321 acres of tribe-owned land into trust on its behalf. It took roughly eight years for the process to conclude. The move re-establishes the tribe’s sovereign territory in Southeastern Massachusetts.
The tribe will build a $500 million brick-and-mortar casino in the city of Taunton, which it can do under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. According to the tribe, ground will be broken in the spring. The project will also include two hotels and a water park.
In 2011, state lawmakers passed a bill that called for one slots parlor and three commercial Las Vegas-style casinos in separate regions of the state. The slots parlor from Penn National Gaming is already in operation, while MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts are both moving slowly toward seeing their respective projects come to fruition.
“History has come full-circle," Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a statement. “This is truly a glorious, monumental day – a day many of our people, both living and deceased, have spent their entire lives working to establish.”
“We have occupied this land for the past 12,000 years. But, over the past four centuries, much of our ancestral home was taken away from us. Our land-into-trust application did not seek to reclaim the entirety of our ancient homeland, which included the eastern part of Massachusetts from Gloucester Bay all the way to Narragansett, Rhode Island. However, we now have a sovereign base from which we can work to sustain our cultural traditions, develop a thriving tribal economy, and serve the needs of our people as we see fit,” he added.
Under the terms of the compact, Massachusetts will receive 17 percent of gaming win if the casino is the only one of its kind in the southeast region of the state. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs had rejected a previous compact agreement between the state and the tribe because it thought Massachusetts was getting too sweet of a deal. The earlier deal called for the tribe to give the state 21.5 percent of gaming win, but that was still less than what commercial casino operators will be paying.
Other casino developers are still interested in building in the southeast region, but the Massachusetts Gaming Commission hasn’t awarded a license for that area, and it’s no sure bet that it will. The tribe doesn’t need a gaming license because it has a compact.
The tribal casino industry in the United States was worth $28.5 billion in 2014.
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