Gun Lake Casino Tribe Continues Expansion, Plans Mixed-Use Development Near Resort
The Gun Lake Casino inward Wayland, Mi., is undergoing a $300 zillion overhaul and expansion. But the send off that will make for a 252-room hotel and 32,000-square-foot indoor “aquadome” won’t live the only thing new at the tribal resort.
The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians — more commonly referred to as the Gun Lake Tribe — has been purchasing undeveloped dry land 'tween its gambling casino and the little townspeople of Wieland for the past tense several years.
The federally recognised tribe late announced what it plans to perform with the rough 1,200 acres it now owns between Gun Lake Casino and Wayland the Smith proper. Tribal leaders revealed to MiBiz that the end is to metamorphose the approximately 2.75-mile stretching of terra firma on US 131 inwards Allegan County into a mixed-use development.
“The preparation phase angle will really be around figuring out what are our constraints and opportunities, and what we put up place first,” Monica King, CEO of Gun Lake Investments, the tribe’s non-gaming investment funds vehicle, told MiBiz.
King said the corridor will be developed over the next II decades.
“Twelve century acres is so important and it testament follow its possess ecosystem. We fare make a span of projects [in development] that we require to fast track and that we trust to erupt strand on next year,” Billie Jean Moffitt King explained.
Hotel, Restaurants, Office Space
The Gun Lake Casino is near 20 miles in the south of Grand Rapids and 30 miles east of Lake Michigan. Not much is natural event inward Wayland, as the townspeople is home to less than 4,500 people.
The stint between the rural casino and the town is currently occupied by cornfields and wooded areas. The Gun Lake Tribe is mulling an motley of potential developments on the stretch, including a 15-story hotel, restaurants, retail shopping centers, and an array of power space.
The end is no more more cornfields,” Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians Tribal Chair Bob Peters told News 8 this week. “The skyline from the gambling casino to Wayland is going to dramatically change o'er the next few years.”
The Gun Lake Casino is currently undergoing dramatic change. Just months after the folk completed a $100 billion redevelopment of its primary quill economic imagination that saw 76,000 foursquare feet of additional gaming blank space added, Gun Lake announced in Apr 2021 that it would commit another $300 one thousand thousand into the casino to work the gaming locale a full-scale resort hotel with an on-site hotel and all of the expected amenities.
Planning of the more substantial expansion phase angle took considerable time, with the federation of tribes inward May 2022 finally breaking ground on the development.
The $300 million spend will outcome inwards Gun Lake Casino offering guests more than 250 hotel rooms, positive the indoor aquadome where trey distinct pocket billiards areas testament bring home the bacon year-round swimming. The aquadome testament cater leash resort-style kitty offerings, with 1 reserved only for guests senior 21 and older. Another testament be for families and the tertiary kitty subdivision for guests seeking a quieter refuge.
Enlarging Tribal Presence
The Gun Lake Tribe’s holding acquisition fling testament only when death when neighboring landowners say no additional acreage is usable for sale.
We’ll gain lands whenever we can,” Peters continued. “Anything that’s immediate to our property, we require to put into trust.”
Any shore acquired by the tribe can only when live placed inwards the federal trustfulness past the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Federally recognised tribes must turn up a historical linkup to any soil recently acquired inwards purchase order for the DOI to designate the shore as sovereign tribal territory.