After 10 long years of government talks, local opposition, land acquisition and thoughtful master planning, New Buffalo, Mich., is now home to the Four Winds Casino Resort. The property, owned by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, features a 130,000-square-foot gaming floor, 3,000 slot machines, 100 table games, six restaurants, entertainment bars, retail venues and a 165-room hotel.
The Four Winds Casino Resort sits on 675 acres of land that was taken into trust by the Pokagon Band, a process that took the tribe nearly three years to complete. “We went through a very thoughtful process to acquire that land,” John Miller, CEO of the Pokagon Band, said. “It’s a 675-acre parcel comprised of 23 different sections, meaning we negotiated with 23 different property owners to get the land. That was a various, long process that we had to do autonomously.”
To help with the process, the tribe hired an agency to negotiate with the property owners, which eventually led to the acquisition of the entire 675 acres.
Once the tribe acquired the land, the Pokagon Band launched its initial development plans. “The tribe made a collective decision to utilize the 675 acres purely for economic development,” Miller said.
The Four Winds Casino Resort currently impacts about 75 of those acres, leaving another 600 for future economic development. “We’re right in the middle of completing our master planning. When we first started developing this project, we had it in two phases. But during all the delays we had the opportunity to carefully study our plans — we went over them again and again. Eventually, we decided to develop the first and second phases simultaneously to keep things fresh,” Miller added.
Another way the tribe kept things fresh was by deciding against building a start-up facility. “We wanted to avoid putting up a temporary casino to make sure we made an extraordinary first impression,” Miller noted. “We felt it would be best for us to develop the entire facility right from the start to create the best gaming experience possible. We didn’t want our guests to come into a temporary facility that would eventually morph into something else. We wanted our guests to have the original experience right from the start.”
To do that, the tribe spent roughly $430 million, all without the help of revenue from a start-up casino.
The Pokagon Tribe’s thoughtful planning also extended to the surrounding community’s needs. “We sat down with the local units of government and asked them what some of their needs and concerns were,” Miller said. “The conclusion was to enhance or build an oversized infrastructure for water and sewer, which we accommodated at our own expense. We created a local agreement before we began master planning and wrote in a revenue-sharing clause called the Pokagon Fund, which will provide additional revenue for community development.”
Before that agreement was reached, there was some concern about how the facility would affect the community. “The locals were strongly opposed to any sort of lighting that would impact the skyline,” Miller said. “To accommodate that concern, we ensured that all of our lighting sheds light down instead of up. We’ve also put up berms throughout the property, so when people drive through the property at night, their headlights project into the berms we’ve built instead of into the houses across the street.”
It was also with respect for the community that the tribe built its water tower both in the least-adventitious position possible and large enough to support community growth.
Like most Native American tribes, the Pokagon Band is environmentally mindful, so when planning for the facility, it not only thought of how the property would affect the people within the surrounding community, but also its plants and animals. “Right from the start, we sited the land to ensure we
didn’t have an adverse impact on the environment,” Miller noted. “The original setting was already on improved lands, and because there was a corn field where the current facility sits, we didn’t have to cut down a lot of trees. Also, the road leading to and from our facility is long and windy. We developed it that way to span all the wetlands and avoid uprooting the endangered plants and animal species that live there.”
Another key factor the tribe used to keep the facility eco-friendly was using standing deadwood only. “We didn’t cut down live trees when we were developing the property. We were really conscious of building without creating any negative impacts on the environment,” Miller said.
The Pokagon Tribe was also very attentive to the design of the property. “We wanted to find a way to subtly weave in our tribal culture and history, but we didn’t want it to be too overwhelming,” Miller said. “So we chose very spiritual elements that were culturally significant. The use of birch, stone and copper throughout the facility are symbolic to our tribe. The roof-line shape of the porte cochere resembles leaves, but to us it really looks like the bottom of canoes stacked on edge. Those are some of the elements that we wanted to incorporate so that Native Americans walking the property would notice the details and non-Native Americans would look at them and say, ‘That’s unique,’ but wouldn’t know exactly what they are.”
Perhaps the best example of this subtle design approach is the property’s promenade. “When you look down the entire front of the facility, the promenade takes you from the parking structure all the way to the east and west sides of the property,” Miller explained. “And on the other side of the promenade are the restaurants and gaming floor. The promenade is four city blocks long and resembles a large longhouse, a culturally significant type of house for our people.”
Through the revenue generated from the Four Winds Casino Resort, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians plans to provide housing, education, family services, medical care and cultural preservation to its approximately 3,150 tribal members.
Key Players
Owners: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians
Operator: Lakes Entertainment
General Manger: Matt Harkness
Subcontractors: Christman/Kraus Anderson
Architect, Design & Master Plan: Urban Design Group
Landscape Architect: Smith Group JJR
Krista Reiner is the Senior Associate Editor of Casino Enterprise Management. She can be reached at (701) 293-7775 or by e-mail at editor1[at]aceme.org.
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