Powers more knowledgeable than I am say that San Diego County has a lot of gaming places, more popularly known as “casinos.” Those same powers say that San Diego County has the largest concentration of tribal governments in the United States. Those tribal governments love to building casinos on their lands and invite the masses to come lose their money gambling….
I have never been a gambler (or “gamer” as they are called now) so I don’t patronize the casinos other than to go by now and then and check out the magnificence of the buildings and the beautiful landscaping.
A couple of the casinos also have associated outlet malls where I occasionally do some shopping.
Native Americans were shuttled off to reservations many decades ago, and those reservations usually were far out in the boondocks. Those boondocks now are just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the cities, and a mere ten miles down the road from me another huge casino is rising from the ground.
That is so massive that in order to get the whole thing in the picture, I had to go almost three miles away! I could get pictures closer but I couldn’t get the whole building in closer pictures because of the hills and valleys.
It’s the new Jamul Casino, a contentious project at best. The rural folks believe that it will bring crime and traffic to the rural community. However, although the money from the casino will go to the Jamul Indian Village, they have made commitments to traffic control, new roads, more police officers, more fire fighters, etc.
The developer, financier, and manager of the casino is Penn National Gaming, and the casino is projected to cost $360 million and open in mid-2016. It’s unofficial name at this point is “Hollywood Casino Jamul.”
The 3-story, 200,oo-square-feet casino will feature over 1,700 slot machines, 50 live gam(bl)ing tables, several restaurants, bars and lounges, and an underground parking structure with 1,800 spaces. An estimated 2,500 construction and permanent jobs will be created.
The community uproar resulted in the Jamul Indian Village changing the initial design of the facility, significantly reducing its height and footprint, including water and wastewater reclamation facilities, going with earth tone exterior colors and downcast lighting to integrate with and complement the surrounding area.
If you like gam(bl)ing, I suspect that this is going to be one of the better casinos in the area and will be popular simply because it is closer to the masses than all the other casinos.
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Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos at Fine Art America
Russel Ray Photos 
It’s great the Indians are taking advantage of capitalism. It’s an interesting turn of events, the way they’re dominating the gambling industry. It truly is gambling. (Gaming is just a term to make it sound more respectable.) With those glorious buildings they’ve used a brilliant marketing strategy, the promises of riches to the masses, when in the end most will leave with less, sometimes much less, than they came in with. Hopefully most will do it for the just the fun of it, using a limited amount of “play money” and not their nest eggs. Time will tell.
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I have a Native American friend who is a member of the Viejas Tribe which operates the largest and most successful casino in San Diego County. You should see the car he drives, his home….. I know how much he makes just from being a member of the tribe. Capitalism at its finest. I think it’s interesting that the white man took everything from the Natives, and now the Natives are getting much of it back, so to speak.
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My thoughts as well!
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Not one for gambling, I never really gave the casinos much notice. I had no idea that the tribes benefited so much. Good for them. Pretty soon they’re going to (if they aren’t already) buy property to expand tribal lands. Maybe reclaim some parts of ancestral lands. That’d be one way to thumb their noses at Columbus Day.
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It’s not quite that easy to add land to expand current tribal lands. The reason is because their tribal lands are theirs and not subject to rule by any city, county, or state. They are considered separate entities, kind of like the Vatican within the city of Rome within Italy. They have treaties with the United States government, so only the federal government modifying the treaty will allow them to buy land and add it to their tribal lands. Thus, they can buy land in the United States but they cannot remove that land from the United States and add it to their tribal (for all practical purposes, foreign) lands.
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Interesting. I did not know that. It’s often interesting visiting your page. 🙂
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