With Caesars, it shows the industry in California has reached full legitimacy.”Ĭaesars and the Agua Caliente tribal council announced a year ago a pact to build a casino Monday’s announcement detailed the level of financial commitment and designated the actual casino site: an eight-acre parcel a block west of the Palm Springs Convention Center and across from the Spa Hotel, owned by the Agua Caliente Indians.Įven though city permission is not needed to construct the facility, city officials were euphoric in heralding the coming of the casino as a long-needed economic shot in the arm to invigorate the struggling downtown district.

Indian gambling, he said, “started off with ma-and-pa operators, then small entrepreneurs, then larger companies, and now we’ve got multinational companies that are heavily licensed and regulated, and which can’t afford to get into anything that is at all shaky. Some proponents of legalized gambling argue that it also opens up the prospect of blackjack and other popular card games in the state. The judge’s ruling is one of several, in California and nationwide, that have opened the door for Indians to offer greater varieties of gambling, including the introduction of video machines that, short of dispensing actual coins, are virtual clones of slot machines. The judge based his decision on the fact that because the state offers Lotto games, it cannot deny the same level of gambling at Indian enterprises that it enjoys for itself.

The attorney general’s office currently is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that orders the state to negotiate such gambling compacts in good faith. But Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente tribal council, said he expects California to have entered compacts with his and other Indian tribal councils around the state-which would allow full-scale Las Vegas-style gambling-by the time the casino opens in 1995.

Indian casino palm springs