HIGHLAND - San Manuel Band of Mission Indians' plans to diversify their business beyond casino gambling advanced a step further on Monday when Mi Cocina restaurant opened at San Manuel Village.

"We're continuously looking for different diversity projects," San Manuel chairman James Ramos said.

San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino is the tribe's most significant source of income, and gaming revenues are used to finance tribe members' individual stipends and government operations such as law enforcement and firefighting.
The San Manuels' casino is on tribal land near San Bernardino and Highland. Their other investments include Orange County office buildings and hotels in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento.
Those projects, respectively known as Fou

r Fires and Three Fires, are joint investments with other Native American governments. San Manuel Village, a mixed-use development, is also built around a hotel, the 110-room Hampton Inn and Suites.

The hotel - Highland's first - opened in September 2008. San Manuel officials do not release casino revenues, but Bryan Benso, the tribe's real estate division manager, said Friday the hotel is at 60 percent to 63 percent occupancy.
"It does have positive cash flow to the tribe. The revenue from the hotel is roughly $2.5 million per year," Benso said.

The San Manuels built 150,000 square feet of commercial space, and hold entitlements to build 22,000 additional square feet in the Village, Benso said.
Future construction awaits further economic recovery, and San Manuel Village is just now approaching full tenancy.

St. Bernardine Urgent Care Center opened in early April and SportsWatch Bar and Grill is scheduled to open in June.

Mi Cocina, the restaurant that opened Monday, has been in business at an East Highlands Ranch shopping center for 20 years, but had outgrown that space, co-owner Norma Arroyo said.

"A lot of people were saying `That's really gutsy of you to do it while the economy's like this,' so we started getting worried," Arroyo said.

Arroyo, her parents and brother own Mi Cocina. The restaurant employed 18 people at its previous location, and now has 65 full- and part-time workers on staff, she said.

Elsewhere in Highland, the San Manuels own 140 acres of the former Norton Air Force Base.

The San Manuels have announced plans to work with Industry-based Majestic Realty to build a logistics center on the site, but development is awaiting road improvements, Benso said.