The Palm Springs Desert Sun sits down with Richard Milanovich, the chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, to talk about the grand opening of the Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa's $300 million hotel.

QUESTION: What's the feeling of the tribe as they prepare for the grand opening?

ANSWER: Relieved. It's been a two-year process with the construction phase. On a project of this size, it's much longer than that. There has been three to five years of prior talk and discussion stages with tribal members and consultants. And it's been in the works much longer. Even when we were planning for the casino in 1999 we talked about building this. We designed it with a hotel attached, but not one of this magnitude.

Q: What will the new hotel bring to the tribe and the community?

A: It will establish a solid footing for the Agua Caliente Casino. The hotel resort is something we didn't have before, and was needed to truly give our players and the visitors coming in and the community overall, solid footing within the valley. We have it to the degree of the Spa hotel, but the Agua Caliente casino always needed that ancillary use of the hotel.

In this instance, it is such a grand, grand facility.

People will come to it in wonderment initially, and it is our hope they will come back because they truly do appreciate what is there - how it's put together, the personnel that will be serving their needs and their marvelous experience.

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New hotel boosts tribe's influence (The Palm Springs Desert Sun 4/18)