Group gathering signatures to delay temporary casino

Thursday, Aug. 27, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.

A group that wants one of the city's three planned casinos to be mostly black-owned on Wednesday started a campaign that could delay the construction start of MGM Grand's temporary casino.

The Community Coalition wants a referendum on the City Council's recent vote to rezone two buildings for MGM's temporary casino. The group needs just 4,982 valid signatures from registered voters to force a vote on the issue, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday.

"We're nullifying the zoning ordinance for MGM," said Ernest Johnson, a leader in the coalition, which contends MGM Grand has fewer links to Detroiters than Atwater/Circus Circus and Greektown/Sault Ste. Marie Band of Chippewa Indians casino groups.

The three groups have been preparing to begin construction on temporary buildings in the coming weeks. The temporary casinos could open by next summer.

The Detroit City Charter, most of which was written in the early 1970s, regulates how an issue can be put on the ballot. Getting a referendum is easier in Detroit than in any other major Michigan city, said Jeffrey Blaine, Detroit's deputy ombudsman.

In April, he advised the City Council that Detroit should make it more difficult to put issues on the ballot by raising the number of signatures required.

Warren, a city with one-seventh of Detroit's population, requires 14,607 signatures - almost three times as many as Detroit, Blaine said.

Detroit's charter says the rezoning would be suspended as soon as the coalition turned in signatures to the city clerk. The deadline is Sept. 14.

If the clerk declares the signatures valid, the rezoning suspension would continue until Detroiters get a chance to vote on the referendum. Because the deadline for putting anything on the Nov. 3 ballot has expired, that would mean the referendum could have to wait until the next scheduled election in 2000. The city could also arrange special elections in 1999, at a cost estimated at several hundred thousand dollars.

MGM Grand would be barred from building its temporary casino at least until the election.

John Redmond, an MGM vice president, said Wednesday that company officials were studying the possibility of a referendum and declined to comment in detail. He added: "I don't know how anyone furthers their cause by doing this."

The possible referendum would not affect the state license applications for the three permanent casinos, which would be in a $1.8-billion complex on the east riverfront.

Earlier this year, the coalition collected enough signatures to place a proposal on the Aug. 4 primary ballot asking whether Detroit businessman Don Barden, who is black and runs a riverboat casino in Indiana, should get to run a Detroit casino. Voters said no.

Barden is not behind the referendum drive, coalition members say.

"It ain't about Don Barden," said Jerome Barney, the coalition's attorney. "People have to understand the effort for a black casino is serious. These folks are not going to go away."

The MGM Grand Zoning issue would be the 10th casino-related issue on a state or city ballot.