Although plans are still in the extremely early phases, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians recently informed Santa Barbara County officials of their desire to expand the Chumash Casino Resort Hotel.
In a March 21 letter sent to Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Chair Steve Lavagnino, Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta said when the hotel was built in 2004, it was “dramatically downsized” during the environmental review process in order to address the concerns of the surrounding community.
“We did ourselves a disservice by building a hotel much smaller than the market dictated,” Armenta said in the letter. “As a result, we are now faced with the problem of not having enough rooms to accommodate all the guests at our gaming facility and not enough rooms to address the potential growth in the market.”
The tribe is considering adding 215 rooms to the hotel, widening the gaming floor by 60,000 square feet, adding a new 750-vehicle parking garage, and upgrading the casino’s food and beverage facilities. Tribal spokesperson Sam Cohen said the tribe doesn’t plan to add any new gaming machines, as the casino already contains the maximum number allowed by the tribal-state compact: 2,000 gaming devices. He added that the majority of the expansion on the gaming floor would be allocated for making the food buffet bigger and adding a large food court.
Space on the current reservation is tight, and there’s not much room for land-development-based expansion, but Cohen said the tribe could move some things around on the casino property and add an additional hotel tower to the resort. However, it’s too early in the design process to say for sure.
Third District Supervisor Doreen Farr said she was curious where the expansions would go because the tribe has made it clear there isn’t much developable space left on the 137-acre reservation. The tribe is in the midst of attempting to annex a plot of land south of the intersection of highways 154 and 246, also known as Camp 4. The Chumash have applied to place the 1,400-acre parcel into trust with the federal government, which would deed the property over to the government on the tribe’s behalf, making it reservation land. In the application, the tribe details its need for land to build houses on for tribal members because the current reservation is at development capacity.
“It’s interesting that they said they didn’t have enough room for housing on the existing reservation, but they think that they have room for this large project,” Farr said. “It’s a very large and ambitious project. Clearly a project that size, regardless of who was proposing it, would be of concern to the community.”
But it’s not just anyone proposing it—it’s the tribe, and as history shows, the project and its plans are sure to cause an uproar within the surrounding community and the county. In February 2013, a group of Santa Ynez residents banded together with the hope of appealing a liquor license expansion granted to the Chumash Casino Resort Hotel by a federal law judge.
Cohen said the tribe plans to hold community meetings and to keep the county involved in the environmental review process for the casino expansion, as required by the tribal-state compact.
“We look forward to a robust dialogue with our neighbors and the community,” Cohen said.
This article appears in Apr 3-10, 2014.