As the venerable old Konocti Harbor Inn sits dark and silent in financially anguished Lake County, a tribe continues to pursue a contested plan to build a big casino resort where? On the edge of Rohnert Park, not far from the Walmart, Costco and Food Maxx.

Props to Santa Rosa’s Marti Swab for verbalizing a win-win solution to the war over the casino sought by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria:

Convert the inn at Konocti to a casino/hotel and send the jobs and tourist dollars to a county that desperately needs them. The tribe’s challenge would be to make the reborn resort on the lake so awesome that nobody would mind the drive.

There surely are people in Rohnert Park who’d happily provide rest-break snacks, back rubs and hugs to Bay Area folks trekking to Konocti — “like South Lake Tahoe, just more down to earth!”