By Jessica Quandt and Serdar Tumgoren
Gilroy/Hollister – Investors backing the proposed Miwok casino
are considering a new location for the project near the Hollister
airport, hoping the move will soften opposition from potential
neighbors in Gilroy and Hollister. But at first glance, city
leaders remain skeptical.
By Jessica Quandt and Serdar Tumgoren
Gilroy/Hollister – Investors backing the proposed Miwok casino are considering a new location for the project near the Hollister airport, hoping the move will soften opposition from potential neighbors in Gilroy and Hollister. But at first glance, city leaders remain skeptical.
Local reaction has led the five-member California Valley Miwoks and Game Won, the tribe’s investor, to reconsider their original proposal to build near the Santa Clara County line on a 209-acre parcel off Highway 25, according to Gary Ramos, project manager for the tribe. Depending on the specific site, the new location could put an additional 15 miles or more between the casino and Gilroy.
For some, however, no distance is far enough.
“Traffic, noise, crime, gambling, prostitution, drugs, lonesharking – the list is endless of the bad things that come to town when gambling gets here,” Gilroy Councilman Bob Dillon said. “Don’t get me wrong – I like to gamble myself. But when I do, I jump on a plane to Tahoe, Reno or Las Vegas.
“They’ve made an industry out of it, but I don’t want it in my back yard… If it was anywhere in our sphere of influence, I would be opposed to it. The further away the better. The closer they move to Hollister the better for me.”
Ramos said investors have sought advice on other possible locations for the casino.
“As we said from our very first meeting, we really wanted to get the input from the locals on where we should go,” Ramos said. “After these last few months, Hwy. 25 seemed to be a sore spot with law enforcement and locals. So we got input from several local businesses and local leaders and they said where they thought it should go, and we took that input and started mapping out a region.”
The tribe and its investors are now eyeing a piece of land near the airport. They have not yet purchased it and will not disclose its exact location.
“Probably the other site (off Hwy. 25) would be a better business site, but we are willing to give up some of the business advantages to benefit the community and decrease traffic,” Ramos said.
Although the tribe wants to keep some traffic off of Hwy. 25 by relocating its casino, Ramos said, this won’t keep them from contributing money toward improvements to the dangerous road.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage questioned whether the relocation would resolve traffic issues.
“The problem is the same thing as on Route 25 – they’ve got to find access to a major roadway,” Gage said. “If you don’t have that, you’re going to always have a problem. We’ll just have to see… I’m not getting too excited until I see the writing on the wall.”
Gilroy Councilman Craig Gartman said he would still oppose the casino because it is a regional issue that affects all of South County, including Hollister, San Juan Bautista, and Morgan Hill.
“Even if it’s 10 miles down the road it’s going to have the same impact,” Gartman said.
The Miwoks new proposal won little praise in Hollister.
Steve Merrell, chairman of Casinos Represent A Poor Solution (CRAPS), said Thursday the new location would not affect the group’s position.
“We’ve been fully expecting them to move the location. The other location was never going to fly because of the environmental issues,” Merrell said. “But we saw that as just a straw man. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the Bolsa. It doesn’t matter if it’s by the airport. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Salinas or Monterey. We don’t want a casino in our region.”
San Benito County Supervisor-elect and local orchardist Anthony Botelho, the only supervisor who has officially come out against the casino, said the new location won’t sway his opinion. “At the old site, there were quite a few environmental restraints. With the new site, I don’t know what kind of environmental impacts there would be, but there would still be social impacts,” said Botelho.
Botelho had been concerned about the previous site’s location on a floodplain, the impacts a casino would have on the already dangerous Hwy. 25, and the social ramifications of gambling in a small community.
“There wasn’t one single issue with the last site,” he said. “I guess the casino folks are trying to deal with some of the environmental issues as they go, but they still have a lot of issues left.”
Supervisor Pat Loe, who on Dec. 1 proposed a successful resolution to start a regional casino planning forum with other county and city leaders, said she was also concerned with the environmental element of the project.
Until the exact site is known, Loe said, it will be tough to tell whether environmental concerns will be eased. The police station built several years ago near the airport had also come across floodplain issues, she said, so there’s a chance the casino would, too.
“Each site has its own problems with impacts, so until we know the site, we won’t be able to make any decisions,” Loe said.
But Ramos said the tribe would be looking into the environmental effects a casino would have on the new location before purchasing the land. The tribe has an environmental group coming in over the next two weeks to examine the site, he said.
“We want to really check and make sure there aren’t going to be any blatant environmental issues before we go ahead,” said Ramos.
The five-member California Valley Miwok tribe had previously proposed building a casino similar in size to Yolo County’s Cache Creek casino, which is 66,000 square feet with 1,762 slot machines, at the site off of Hwy. 25. While the new site will be similar in size, Ramos said he won’t know whether the scope will be the same until the tribe is able to sit down with local leaders.
The tribe is also in the midst of conducting an economic impact report, and hopes to have a preliminary draft ready in late January. The final document should come out in early February, Ramos said.
With the newly proposed site less than three miles from the heart of downtown Hollister, local businesses and the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce will be anxiously awaiting the report. The new location could either boost local tourism and spending or keep it concentrated in the casino area, according to local Economic Development Corporation Director Al Martinez.
“Naturally if you look at any casino, you try to keep the people in the place, you don’t want them going out. If it’s closer to Hollister, and if there is benefit to be had, Hollister will more likely get it than if it was at the location they were initially talking about,” Martinez said, adding the location off Hwy. 25 would encourage patrons to go to Gilroy.
“(With the new location), I think if people at the casino say ‘Let’s take a few minutes off, let’s go take in a movie,’ then they’d come into Hollister. But for them to go into town, they’d have to need something or want to stay at other lodging that doesn’t belong to the casino. It’s just like Vegas or Reno: They want the people to be there, because if they’re eating there and staying there, they’re going to be gambling.”
