LV firm in deal for Calif. Indian casino

David Strow

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 10:59 a.m.

Anchor Gaming Inc. of Las Vegas is joining a partnership building a $90 million Indian casino near San Diego, a move it says was triggered by California's recent compact allowing the expansion of tribal gaming.

The 150,000-square-foot casino and entertainment facility, which will feature more than 1,500 slot machines and 40 table games, is scheduled to open by March 2001. The 1,500 slots put the casino at about the size of the Reserve in Henderson in the Las Vegas market.

The 1,500 figure is about 500 below the slot machine cap allowed in California under the tribal gaming compact signed this month.

Officials today announced the casino will be owned by the Pala Band of Mission Indians, and will be located about 15 miles north of Escondido. The tribe will finance the new property, although Anchor pledged to assist the tribe in its financing efforts.

"For years our Tribe has been patiently awaiting the right opportunity to participate in gaming in the state of California," said Robert Smith, Tribal Council Chairman of the Pala Band, in a statement. "We are looking forward to realizing our long-time hope of taking Indian gaming in Southern California to the next level."

Anchor will help develop the casino and then manage it for an initial period of seven years.

"This came up in the last couple of months, and we saw it as a viable opportunity for the company, and decided to go forward," said Joe Murphy, Anchor's vice president of gaming operations. "We hope people (California tribal interests) would approach us (with more deals) as we do this.

"We're a pretty fiscally responsible company, and we take a look at different opportunities all of the time. We'll never turn down the opportunity to look at (an expansion opportunity in California)."

The Pala Band casino's development is a joint venture with businessman Jerome Turk, who lives in both San Diego and Las Vegas. Turk has managed casinos in numerous states, including the Fitzgeralds hotel-casinos in downtown Las Vegas, Mississippi and Colorado.

Anchor and Turk will equally split development and management profits during the contract.

In expanding into California, Anchor is seizing opportunity out of an event viewed with great fear in Nevada -- the expansion of legalized Indian gaming in California.

California voters are scheduled to vote next March on a constitutional amendment that would legalize Indian casinos offering both slot machines and blackjack. This vote would ratify a tribal gaming compact signed between most of California's tribes and Gov. Gray Davis earlier this month.

But during the last fight to legalize tribal gaming in California, Proposition 5, Nevada gaming interests threw millions of dollars behind efforts to scuttle it. The state's gaming interests feared expanded gaming in California, Nevada's largest market, would seriously hurt Nevada's casino industry.

Although the company now has a business deal riding on the success of the passage of the California amendment, Murphy shied from expressing an opinion on the controversial issue.

"The voters will decide," Murphy said. "It could go either way, but that's for the voters to decide."

Anchor's primary business is slot machine manufacturing and distribution. The casino will be the company's fourth. Anchor currently operates two casinos in Colorado and a combination racetrack-casino in New Mexico.