Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 | 9:57 a.m.
WEST WARWICK, R.I. -- Behold a vision of the new Las Vegas, carved not from the Nevada desert but from the woodlands, suburbs and mill towns of southern New England.
If the chips fall right for the region's native tribes, as many as six Indian-owned casinos could one day be operating within 40 miles of West Warwick, a gritty former textile town where the Narragansett Tribe aims to build a $500 million gambling emporium.
Gaming experts say such proliferation would be good for consumers, who benefit in a competitive marketplace, but bad for the tribes.
"Market saturation starts to squeeze profits," says Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno. "There's not a tremendous amount of growth left to do in New England."
The region's two existing casinos, Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun Resort, both in Connecticut, are among America's largest gambling operations. Each has been a gold mine for the tribes who own them, Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan.
In recent weeks, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head-Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard announced renewed efforts to build a casino in southeastern Massachusetts with help from Louisiana's Tunica-Buloxi Tribal Nation.
The Nipmuc Nation won preliminary federal recognition in January and is said to be eyeing land on the Connecticut-Massachusetts state line for a gambling complex.
To the south, the Eastern Pequot and Paucatuck Eastern Pequot bands of North Stonington, Conn., have earned preliminary tribal status and have plans for a casino. They share their corner of the state with Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.
The Narragansetts and Wampanoags appear to be closest, though both have been stymied for years by state politics.
Both tribes have federal status. Each has floated proposals for casinos that would be the first of their kind in the two states.
West Warwick and the Massachusetts cities of Fall River and New Bedford -- where the Wampanoags want to build -- are all ripe for the kind of urban renewal and economic development a casino might bring.
But Fall River voters last year refused to sell 35 acres to the Wampanoags for a high-stakes bingo parlor, and in 1997 the Massachusetts House overwhelmingly rejected the tribe's plan for a casino in New Bedford.
The Narragansetts have met similar Statehouse opposition in Rhode Island, where they've sought to build a casino for more than a decade. The House Finance Committee last year voted against the West Warwick plan. Tribal leaders responded with allegations of racism, linking lawmakers' resistance to centuries of oppression by the state government.
In the interest of Indian solidarity, the tribes publicly support each other's efforts to bring more Indian gaming to New England. Nipmuc spokesman Charlie Manning said the tribe is fully supportive of the Wampanoags and disavowed any notion of competition between the two groups.
"The Nipmuc Nation would also look forward to working side-by-side with the Aquinnah Wampanoags," reads a statement released by the Nipmuc Nation earlier this month.
But economics dictate that the first to get a casino up and running has the best chance of seeing Foxwoods-type profits, Eadington said.
"Tribes take the position that they support anything that benefits other tribes," he said. "But you can make some very obvious predictions that with each new casino, the customer pool gets thinner."
Wampanoag spokesman Charlie Leonard argues that market economics don't always apply to tribal matters.
"The Wampanoags genuinely wish all other Indian tribes well in their attempts to open a gaming facility in New England," he said. "It's not a competitive situation. There's more of a kinship and a collegiality among Native-American tribes than there is in the business world."
But most tribal gaming operations rely on private sector startup funds, and a crowded field could chase away would-be investors.
"When the fourth or fifth tribe goes looking for financing, the money might not be there," Eadington said.
West Warwick Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer keeps an eye on developments in the gaming industry knowing that the Narragansetts need a statewide referendum to go forward with plans for a casino in his town. At the earliest, that vote would occur in November 2002.
"There's only so much room for gambling growth," he said. "If somebody else comes in ahead of the Rhode Island timeline, we'll have to decide whether it's still worth it."
Mark Van Norman, executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association in Washington, says New Mexico and Arizona have even greater concentrations of Indian casinos, though they are considerably smaller.
"Given the density of population, there's really no question in my mind that the facilities would be popular and successful if they went in," Van Norman said.
Eadington said southern California has seen no fewer than 10 new Indian casinos open their doors in the past year. How these endeavors fare in another densely populated region may offer a good barometer for the New England tribes.
"The difference is that you have two huge gaming operations already operating," he said. "That makes it riskier for the rest of them. Can they afford to build at a comparable scale?"
A study commissioned recently of the Wampanoags by the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche concluded that new gaming operations in the region would have to be similar in size to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun to compete with them.
"The smaller operator is at a significant disadvantage to the larger operator," Eadington agreed. "You can survive as a smaller facility, but you have to have a market niche not serviced by the larger casinos."
Van Norman points out that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have managed to peacefully coexist even though they are just 10 miles apart.
"I think the Pequots were doing well before the Mohegan Sun went in, and now the Mohegans are doing well," Van Norman said. "They haven't seen a downside to being so close together."
In the midst of a sluggish economy, Foxwoods reported its best month ever in July, taking in nearly $74 million in revenue from its more than 6,000 slot machines. Mohegan Sun will unveil a $1 billion expansion in September which includes new casino space, a 10,000-seat arena, a hotel and an 85-foot waterfall.
Many members of other New England tribes have found employment at the two casinos and look to their success as a possible answer to poverty and unemployment among their numbers.
But their efforts have been slowed by a struggle for federal recognition -- in the case of the Nipmucs and Eastern Pequots -- and by statehouse opposition in the case of the Wampanoags and Narragansetts. Federal law allows sovereign Indian nations to operate gambling facilities, but only with the approval of state government.
The Wampanoag study shows their proposed casino would create 9,000 full-time jobs and help the state recapture some of the _$840 million spent by Massachusetts residents at gaming facilities in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
But the study did not address whether those findings still apply if one or more other new Indian gaming facilities open around the same time, said Leonard.
"Our forecasting deals with the reality as we have it today," he said. "If the reality changes, we'll have to do new forecasting."
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