Connecticut tribe joins Kansas casino effort

Roxana Hegeman

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.

WICHITA, Kan. -- The Mashantucket Pequots of Connecticut, who became rich after building one of the world's largest casinos, have been reaching out to tribes across the United States to help them develop and finance gambling ventures.

Their latest partnership -- a proposed $270 million gambling resort in south-central Kansas -- was announced Thursday in Wichita with the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.

The deal with the Pequots, owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino, brings financing and management experience to the ambitious project. The Iowa Tribe has a small casino on its 2,700-acre reservation on the Kansas and Nebraska state line but wants to build the project in Park City, just outside Wichita.

"A year and a half ago it looked like something that would be very, very difficult and the likelihood of it succeeding looked very dim," said former Wichita mayor Bob Knight, who is working with the Iowa tribe on the project. "Over the last 18 months, this has turned into a very exciting project, and one that we will be able to conclude."

The project has won the support of Park City, but the tribe still must negotiate a compact with Kansas state officials and get approval from the U.S. Interior Department.

Planned is a 260,000-square-foot facility containing 2,500 slot machines and 50 gaming tables. The resort would include a casino, event center and hotel on a 59-acre site. It is expected to initially create 1,500 to 2,500 jobs.

"The Pequots Tribe has helped thousands of Native Americans all across America to realize their hopes and their dreams despite all the past generations of hopelessness and despair," said Iowa Tribal Chairman Leon Campbell.

Knight said he was confident of getting federal approval, especially with the Pequots onboard. Supporters planned to take the project, now that it has its financing put together, to the state Legislature when it returns.

If the state does not want the casino, the Iowa Tribe will take the plan to its reservation land in White Cloud, he said.

Citing a "sense of urgency," Knight noted the Pawnee Nation wants to build a smaller casino in Oklahoma, just south of Arkansas City, Kan.

Gary Armentrout, chief development officer for Foxwoods Development Co., said that because of its success at Foxwoods, the Pequots have been able to take a national leadership role in American Indian gambling.

"The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe now wishes to offer its enormous financial resources, enormous human resources to other Native American tribes to assist them in achieving their own measure of economic success and their own measure of tribal self-sufficiency through the development and management of casino resort projects," Armentrout said.

In addition to the Iowa Tribe in Kansas, the Pequots have agreements with tribes in Arizona and California, he said.