The West Valley city has invested about $490 million in west Glendale, and city officials shudder at the competition that a casino would create. Glendale spent about $80 million on its own convention and media center, $180 million in Jobing.com Arena, and borrowed $200 million for Camelback Ranch-Glendale, the spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox. It also brokered deals to land the Cardinals' new stadium, investing about $9.5 million in the project and another $11.5 million for youth sports fields around the stadium.
Glendale Councilwoman Joyce Clark believes that the tribe's West Valley Resort would suck the life out of many existing businesses by offering better deals on hotel rooms, dining, and entertainment — the same conclusion reached in a March 2009 study commissioned by Glendale to determine the economic impact of having a casino as a neighbor.
Monica Alonzo
San Lucy Chairman Albert Manuel remembers when a vast Gila Bend reservation was lush and full of life.
An artist’s rendering of the resort-style casino the Tohono O’odham want to build in the West Valley.
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Indeed, the study concluded that the casino complex "would become a destination that would serve as competition for businesses" at Westgate City Center.
Conducted by Elliott Pollack & Company, the study minimized any benefits the casino might create for the Glendale. It noted that the city would be saddled with extra costs for services such as public safety and street maintenance.
Glendale is concerned about the competition to Westgate City Center because it relies on the businesses there to generate the sales-tax revenue needed by the city to pay off about $490 million it borrowed to spark life into its western flank.
City officials moan that the Tohono O'odham have an unfair advantage in the marketplace because, as a sovereign nation, the tribe can undercut prices of adjacent businesses and because reservation isn't subject to state and local taxes.
Glendale will be happy only if the feds deny the tribe's application for a reservation, because then the city might someday annex the acreage and get a cut of sales and property taxes from traditional non-casino businesses that could locate there. To stay afloat, the city needs to squeeze every sales-tax dollar it can out of local businesses to cover debt payments tied to its prized sports-and-entertainment complex.
Administrators already had to cut $11 million from Glendale's 2009-10 budget because of an overall drop in tax revenue, and they estimate that they may have to cut $17 million from next year's budget.
The city has barely managed to make the loan payments for its complex without dipping into sales taxes generated by businesses outside the Westgate complex.
City Attorney Craig Tindall told New Times that the city's concerns are not purely economic.
"This is absolutely the wrong place to put a reservation and gaming facility," he said. "It's disruptive. Allowing this reservation is too great a risk."
As the laws stand, Glendale would not be able to annex the land without the Tohono O'odham's approval as long as the tribe owns it. But if the federal government turns down the tribe's reservation application, who knows what could happen? The tribe could conceivably sell the land and buy another plot that could be deemed reservation and build its casino there.
All this is to say that Glendale has precious little financial wiggle room, though nobody forced city leaders to step into the role of developer and invest public money to bankroll a hockey arena, a spring training complex, and a football stadium.
Nobody forced Glendale to hinge repayment of the massive loans for the sports-and-entertainment complex on sales taxes from future businesses that its leaders said would sprout like wildflowers around the stadium and arena.
It is true that the Nation would have the advantage of not automatically paying state and local sales taxes or fees to offset the city's need to build new streets or water lines for the casino. But it's also true that Glendale has had the advantage of using its government pulpit to protect its own interests as a developer.
On another front in the battle, Glendale officials are lambasting the tribe for concealing its ownership of the land and for keeping its plans for it hidden for six years before making a public announcement.
It is unfair criticism because hushed business transactions are common among developers. If a developer shows its hand too early, it could lose a negotiating edge or give competitors ample time to derail a project.
Albert Manuel, the San Lucy District chairman, said the tribe concealed its identity when it bought the West Valley land because of the tribe's previous experience with land negotiations.
After the tribe lost the roughly 10,000 acres of the Gila Bend reservation land to perpetual flooding and the land-replacement act was adopted, it found that replacing the property was difficult.
The act gave the Tohono O'odham $30 million in federal money with which to purchase unincorporated land in Maricopa or the other counties. The tribe was allowed to search for property outside southern Arizona when leaders could not find land near San Lucy at fair market value.
Manuel recalls that once it was known how much money the tribe had to spend, landowners jacked up prices when the tribe expressed interest in their properties. Manuel said some property owners tried to sell land for five times more than it was worth.
