The Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians of Ukiah is betting on Mare Island as the potential site for a casino. 

Representatives of the tribe gave a series of interviews to the media at Holiday Inn Vallejo on Monday in an effort to put their proposal before the public. The group was scheduled to go before the Vallejo City Council Tuesday with preliminary plans for a casino and hotel development on a 120-acre tract of Mare Island. 

The tribe also is seeking other suitable locations in Richmond and the surrounding Bay Area for the casino as well as a reservation and other possible business projects. 

"We're trying to be up front about this," said Michael Derry, director of Black Oak Development, the commercial development arm of the Guidiville Band.
"We're not sneaking around in any manner. We are looking for a community that is willing to work with the tribe." 

The mini-publicity campaign for the tribe and its project came just one day before the Vallejo City Council was scheduled to hold a study session on the qualifications of five development proposals for a portion of Mare Island.
The casino proposal, submitted by commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield and West County Development Co. LLC, includes a 100-acre site devoted to Indian gaming, a hotel and entertainment center. A business park would be built on an additional 20 acres. 

Derry said economic feasibility studies show the casino and related projects could bring 1,900 jobs to Vallejo with $40 million in annual payroll. He added that there would be millions of dollars in additional revenues realized. 

"We can reduce unemployment and welfare to any city we come to," Derry said.
City officials were cautious about offering opinions on the plan Monday, saying it was too early in the process and that more information needed to be gathered on all five applicants and their respective projects. 

The other development candidates include The Eagle Group, Lennar Mare Island LLC, Titan Research & Development LLC and Weston Solutions Inc.
"We are not going to be making a decision (Tuesday)," Community Development Director Al da Silva said. "We will be making a recommendation to the council in January based on some kind of matrix we will be developing to give some kind of objectivity to the selection process." 

Mayor Tony Intintoli added that the proposal is also likely to stir up public controversy as similar projects have in other communities throughout California.
"My initial reaction is to say that I'm sure there would have to be a lot of review of it in the community before we knew what kind of attitude the public would have about it," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it certainly isn't something that would match the reuse plan for Area 1." 

The roughly 20 bands of the Pomo Nation remaining from the original 72 that once thrived in Northern California fall under a special category never envisioned by the 1988 federal law that allows tribes to operate casinos only on their own reservations. 

The federal government and the California Rancheria Act declared several tribes disbanded in 1958. The Guidiville Band was also "terminated" in 1961 and lost collective ownership of its original rancheria that sat on 244 acres near Ukiah.
"To us, termination meant they were trying to take our identity away," said Donald Duncan, vice chairman of the tribe. "Later Congress ruled that was illegal. In September 1991, the federal government recognized us as being Native Americans again and gave us our identity back." 

The land, however, did not come with that recognition.
The reconstituted tribes, like the Lytton Band of the Pomo Indians that unsuccessfully proposed a casino for American Canyon in the 1990s, have been forced to purchase new land for their reservations and business interests. 

They argue that creates a loophole that allows them to buy land for casinos in lucrative urban centers far away from the mostly rural reservations lawmakers saw as the homes for gaming facilities. 

Federal and state officials are increasingly offering challenges to the establishment of casinos off of tribal land bases. 

The Guidiville Band, however, says it is only seeking a way to establish a means of funding tribal housing, health care and education. 

"They restored (the tribe) but without land," Derry said. "It's pretty difficult to do anything. The tribe is working very, very hard to provide a future for their children, their grandchildren and their elders.