Pomona Council Will Consider Putting Card Club Issue on Ballot

The City Council on Monday night will consider whether to ask voters to approve the establishment of a card club as part of a proposed hotel development.

Councilman Mark A. T. Nymeyer said Wednesday he will ask the council to place the measure on the June 5 ballot at the request of an investor group he declined to identify. He said he did not know when officials would be able to publicly name the investors.

Nymeyer said the investors would spend $30 million to $35 million to build the card club and a hotel of at least 250 rooms. No site has been chosen, he said.

Nymeyer, who is acting pastor of the Central Baptist Church, said the investors first approached Councilwoman Nell Soto, but she suggested that they talk with him. “I’m the church guy on the council, and she felt it was important that they discuss the matter with me,” he said.

The councilman said, “I don’t gamble, and I don’t advise people to gamble.” But, he said, the card club offers the city a potentially rich source of revenue.

He said the revenue could enable the city to fulfill its promise to reduce city residents’ high utility taxes.

Nymeyer said he asked the investors if they could build a large hotel without a card club, but was told that it would not be sufficiently profitable without the gambling.

If the project is not approved in Pomona, he said, it probably will be built elsewhere in the San Gabriel Valley or in western San Bernardino County.

Nymeyer said the investors have agreed to pay for the city’s $40,000 to $50,000 cost of putting the issue on the ballot, so the city will lose nothing in submitting the proposal to voters.