Indian Casino Brings Tourism, Money To Oregon Town

CANYONVILLE, Ore. - Business is brisk at the Cow Creek Indian Gaming Center, which a local development official says could become as big a tourist draw as Ashland's annual Shakespeare Festival, though "not as classy."

The tiny Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians opened the casino, featuring a 450-seat bingo hall and 250 video slot machines, in April 1992.

Business has been growing ever since, hitting its peak this summer, casino manager Peter Ingenito said.

"Three weeks after we opened, we realized we had built too small," he said.

The casino, marked by a 117-foot sign, sits off Interstate 5 just north of the Canyonville city limits.

The casino did not fill the main streets of Canyonville, as some backers predicted. But it did draw tourists into town.

"It's up to the business community to draw activity downtown. Any money dropped in the community helps everybody," said Harvey Denison, owner of Fat Harvey's truck stop.

And the small town has benefited in other ways. When the town needed $103,000 in matching funds to obtain a $1.3 million federal grant to improve its water system, the Cow Creeks kicked in $25,000.

As a sovereign nation, Cow Creek is not required to disclosed financial information about its operation.

Tribal chairwoman Sue Shaffer responded to a rumor that the casino is pulling in as much as $1 million a month by retorting: "I wish."

Still, Shaffer said the tribe has been able to increase its debt

repayment twice since opening. The casino was built with an $820,000 loan from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Capital Gaming Inc., the Atlanta City company that manages the center for the tribe, provided the equipment.

The tribe's five-year contract with Capital allows the company to recover its investment and requires it to train employees, preferably tribal members, to assume management when the contract expires.

While all 175 of the casino's employees are from the area, only 12 are tribal members. Shaffer said she had hoped more of the tribe's 830 members would turn to the hall for job security.

A few did. Chris Allin, 45, quit her job as an emergency medical technician to work at the casino as a paymaster in the bingo hall. She was promoted to bingo manager last spring.

"The people I work with and for are really good people," Allin said. "It's like a family."

Peter Graff, Douglas County manager for the Coos-Curry-Douglas Business Development Corp., is encouraged by the casino's success.

Graff said the casino could make Canyonville a tourist attraction on par with Oregon's best-known cultural event.

"It's not as classy as the Shakespeare Festival, and Canyonville is not going to become Ashland," he said.

"But still and all the casino is going to be the nucleus of a lot of economic activity. I don't think after 15 years of trying, anything we could have done would be better for Canyonville than that."