The Contra Costa Times finally churned out a decent bit of reporting on the billion-dollar-plus casino planned for the former navy base at Point Molate.
Reporter John Simerman’s story covers all the bases. Though not in as much depth as we’d like. We don’t blame that on Simerman, since Dean Singleton has downsized his Bay Area papers so drastically that it’s hard for reporters to do deep, long-term investigations.
Here’s the opener of his story, which ran in Sunday’s paper:
Nearly lost amid the shouting of a high-volume campaign season, 42,000 Richmond voters may do more to change the region’s environment than in any election in decades.
They will vote on a gambling resort, right on the Bay, with more slot machines than all the casinos on Lake Tahoe’s south shore — the first Vegas-style casino in a California urban area. And if its magnitude is not well understood, its origins are even less so.
The resort’s journey to the ballot — which, if voters agree, could prod federal approval — is a seven-year saga with an uncommon cast, from a figure with alleged criminal ties who spurred a small band of American Indians to pursue casino riches, to a development team that includes a former U.S. senator and Clinton-era defense secretary, a major Chicago real estate financier and a former governor’s land czar.
Along with the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, a tribe with 112 members and roots in Mendocino County, they’ve pushed ahead with the help of, among others, a former top aide to U.S. Sen. John McCain, and financing first from Harrah’s and now from the tribe that runs Cache Creek Casino Resort in Yolo County.
It’s a story of far-reaching influence and lavish promises: eight-figure payouts, a local jobs boon, historical preservation, the vow of a world-class “green” design — all contingent on a high-roller haven at Point Molate, a jut of former Navy land near the foot of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
Sadly, the article doesn’t provide much information about the fellow with the alleged organized crime ties who was involved in both Richmond casino projects at the earliest stage.
Folks who want to learn more about Gary Fears should read an excellent two-part series on the gentleman written by of Focus/midwest by C.D. Stelzer.
Here’s a brief section of the first article:
Gary R. Fears, the 63-year-old owner of Avatar, now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, but his career is deeply rooted in Madison County politics, where he made his bones decades ago as a Downstate operative for then-Gov. Dan Walker. Since leaving public life, Fears has traded on his insider status and political connections to parlay a series of controversial deals into a byzantine financial empire.
The foundation of that empire began in the early 1980s, when Fears
received millions from the state to build a hotel in Collinsville but eventually defaulted on the loan, leaving Illinois taxpayers in the lurch. A decade later, he circumvented regulators and made a fortune selling his family’s hidden ownership interest in Illinois’ first riverboat casino.
Since then, Fears has invested in Indian casinos and taken on exotic clients, among them an Internet gambling venture based in Gibraltar and Morocco’s government-owned phosphate industry. His hired guns include Republican and Democratic operatives with access to the highest levels of the federal government.
If that’s not enough to give one pause, Fears’ latest acquisition is a Soviet military aircraft that has been grounded for nearly a year because of litigation. As often is the case for Fears, the lawsuit is another high-stakes craps game in a world filled with risk.
Federal law enforcement agencies have investigated Fears’ activities in the past, and he has been a person of interest in criminal investigations in at least two states. Two of Fears’ business partners have met untimely deaths. Fears also has been the plaintiff or defendant in a raft of civil cases, and his international financial transactions spurred the IRS to go after him for back taxes.
But despite intense scrutiny by local, state and federal authorities, he has never been cited for a single criminal violation.
The second article is here.
We wrote quite a bit about the project whilst reporting for the Berkeley Daily Planet, and we’ve been following the casino business since our first reporting job at a daily newspaper at the Las Vegas Review-Journal back in 1966.
The bottom line: Casinos are parasites, sucking cash out of community and offering nothing in return but blue collar jobs and cash. They produce no goods, no constructive services, and inevitably they draw the attention of organized crime.
Just remember one thing: The house always wins.
Because tribes are sovereign nations, law enforcement oversight is minimal, unlike states such as Nevada and New Jersey where hard experience and decades of corruption were finally tempered by regulations and oversight bodies with real teeth.
While East Bay casinos will offer some jobs and payments to governments in desperate need of cash, in the end, most of the money will go to folks who are already very rich, and local communities will be left struggling with increased crime and more desperate people who have lost what little they have to people who don’t really need it.
Native American gambling — we refuse to use the word gaming, which is a spinmeister coinage to avoid a harsh reality — was a brilliant ploy. Most people feel guilty about the way the United States screwed over the folks who once lived across the land, and offering gambling as an atonement [blood money] seems like an easy out and avoids the real issue, which is reparations for all those breached treaties.
We’ll watch what happens with great interest.
eats shoots 'n leaves 