Tribe plans resort near casino

Monday, Jan. 22, 2001 | 11:15 a.m.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX -- The Gila River Indian Community plans later this month to begin building a $125 million resort near its casino south of Phoenix.

The 500-room resort, which would include a spa and 36 holes of golf, would push Arizona's gambling far beyond the makeshift casinos that Indian tribes started with in 1993.

The resort is the largest of the tribal gaming-hotel projects on the horizon, including a 144-room hotel due to open next month adjacent to Harrah's Ak-Chin Casino south of Phoenix and a proposed 500-room hotel near the Fort McDowell Casino east of Fountain Hills.

They would join the Cliff Castle Casino and hotel complex in Camp Verde, the San Carlos Apache Tribe's $40 million golf resort and casino east of Globe, and Bucky's Casino in the Prescott Resort.

The Gila River project clearly ups the ante in a business that started with bingo halls in the mid-1980s.

archive