Grand Ronde Tribes plan hotel and won't rule out casino at new site

Monday, August 1, 2016

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are completing demolition work at the old Multnomah Greyhound Park in Wood Village, Oregon, as part of efforts to redevelop the site. Photo from Facebook

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The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are slowly revealing plans for a former racetrack near Oregon's most populous city.

The tribe wants to build an eight-story hotel and an "entertainment-oriented campus" at the site of the old Multnomah Greyhound Park in Wood Village, The Gresham Outlook reported. The 31-acre site, which the tribe purchased last year for about $10 million, lies just outside of Portland.

Chairman Reyn Leno has acknowledged that gaming remains on the table. But there are no plans for a casino at this point and doing so would require several steps at the state and federal level that could take years to complete.

"There’s a lot of hurdles for (gaming)," Leno told The Portland Tribune last month as the tribe started demolition work at the site.

Redevelopment of the old track goes along with efforts to expand the tribal economy. The tribe is already planning to renovate the Spirit Mountain Casino, about 75 miles away.

Spirit Mountain depends on patrons from the Portland area and that customer base could shift to neighboring Washington once the Cowlitz Tribe opens the ilani gaming facility in April 2017. That facility will be about 30 miles north of Portland.

The Grand Ronde Tribes are trying to stop the new casino but lost a decision before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was right to approve the land-into-trust application for the site in Washington.

"After 160 years of landlessness, the federal government and the federal courts have confirmed our right to this reservation. We are moving forward, improving the lives of our 4,000 tribal members, bringing more jobs to the local economy and continuing to forge partnerships in the southwestern Washington community," Bill Iyall, the chairman of the Cowlitz Tribe, said in a statement on Facebook.

Get the Story:
Details, including an 8-story hotel, emerge for tribe's site at former greyhound park (The Portland Business Journal 8/1)
New details emerge on Greyhound Park redevelopment (The Gresham Outlook 7/29)
Cowlitz Tribe Can Continue Casino Construction, Following Court Ruling (Oregon Public Broadcasting 7/29)
Cowlitz Tribe wins federal appeal (The Columbian 7/29)
Casino 'not off the table' for Greyhound Park, tribe says (The Portland Tribune 6/29) $P D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Decision:
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon v. Jewell (July 29, 2016)