Fight looms over proposed Lansing casino
Pete Daly

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians today announced plans for a $245 million, off-reservation casino in downtown Lansing. The tribe is proposing to build and operate the 125,000-square-foot Kewadin Lansing Casino on land it would buy from the city of Lansing.

The tribe already has five Kewadin brand casinos in the Upper Peninsula: at Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace, Manistique, Christmas and Hessel. The Lansing casino would be adjacent to the Lansing Center and would result in about 1,500 permanent jobs.

The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe owned the Greektown Casino Hotel in downtown Detroit but lost it in bankruptcy proceedings a couple of years ago.

Bernero said the proposed Lansing casino would generate about $6 million or more a year in revenue sharing payments to the city, which would be used to create the Lansing Promise, a program to fund four-year college scholarships for Lansing Public Schools graduates.

According to another news release distributed by James Nye on behalf of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, a coalition of tribes will fight the Lansing casino proposal. The Nottawaseppi own the FireKeepers Casino in Battle Creek and the Saginaw Chippewa own Soaring Eagle in Mount Pleasant.

Their news release said that the state compacts that allowed construction of both the FireKeepers and Gun Lake Casino include zones around them where no other casinos may be built — and that reportedly includes the city of Lansing. Under the compacts, if the exclusivity clause is not honored, the tribes would no longer be required to continue making annual payments to the state, which now total $22 million, according to the news release from Nye.