Indians Favor Gambling in Palm Springs : Resort: Tribe with authority to establish casinos ends its longstanding opposition. The area is coveted as prime market.

From the onset of Indian gambling a decade ago, this desert resort has been the nation’s prize target for casino promoters, the one place with the potential to become another Las Vegas. But there was a problem--the Agua Caliente Indians, who own much of the land here, wanted no part of gambling.

But now the Agua Calientes are finally ready to roll the dice, meaning this well-known haven for Hollywood stars and snowbirds could soon get its first casino and, possibly, a tantalizing lure for a new generation of tourists.

While business leaders seem happy about the prospect of a new source of dollars, a loud voice is rising in dissent: that of Mayor Sonny Bono. Warning that “second-rate” gambling “could bury this city,” he has angered the powerful Indians and drawn strong criticism from others.

“What we’re talking about is the heart of Palm Springs,” Bono said recently, adding a swipe at the Indians: “You work for several years to try to create an image and now some uncontrollable force can just take that and cast that out.”

The new interest in gambling is a stunning turnaround for the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, who for years were among the most prominent holdouts as tribes from coast to coast looked to gambling for economic revival.

“We don’t need it,” one tribe member declared just months ago, “and we don’t want it.”

The tribe’s recent vote to rescind its longstanding anti-gambling stance reflects uneasiness about the sagging Palm Springs tourist industry and a desire to help younger tribe members who do not have the historic land “allotments” that made older members wealthy.

“There are a few members that have a Rolls Royce,” said tribal historian Anthony Andreas. “But others are on welfare.”

So, after rejecting repeated overtures from outsiders pushing gambling proposals, “Someone finally said, ‘Let’s go for it,’ ” said tribal Chairman Richard M. Milanovich, 49. Adult members of the tribe voted 85 to 24 to toss out a 1983 ordinance that prohibited commercial gambling on tribal land.

Last week, tribal officials began putting together a committee to pick the best location for a gambling facility and to screen the outsiders who are “coming out of the woodwork” with offers to build and operate it, Milanovich said.

Already, “50 or 60” individuals and firms have made proposals, Milanovich said, some suggesting downtown sites, others recommending locations off Interstate 10, more accessible by car.

Some have suggested that the gambling be part of a massive development project--perhaps including an arena or concert hall.

“We keep saying (we want) a first-class establishment . . . probably a facility that somewhat mimics a Vegas-type of operation,” Milanovich said.

The scope is limited by the patchwork of federal and state laws governing Indian gambling. California tribes now can offer off-track betting, poker and high-stakes bingo. At least 10 tribes have petitioned the state to approve lucrative slot machines, a first step in what is expected to be a long legal fight for full casino gambling.

Even without slots, the specter of gambling here has drawn the interest of far more than the usual Indian gambling promoters, who often are graduates of smaller charity bingo operations. The interested groups include Nevada gaming companies and operators of California’s largest legal card clubs.

“Palm Springs has such a worldwide reputation,” said Whittier College law professor I. Nelson Rose, an expert on gambling issues. “This could make it a true destination resort for gaming as well as recreation.”

George G. Hardie, general manager of the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens, one of the two biggest card parlors in Los Angeles County, has been trying for years to bring gambling to the desert resorts. He even ran for mayor--and won--in Cathedral City, which adjoins Palm Springs, to promote a $25-million hotel-poker club. But his plan stalled when voters defeated a 1989 ballot measure on legalizing such gambling.

Area residents, however, have no vote when it comes to gambling on the Indian land that encompasses much of Palm Springs. Hardie said he proposed to the Indians an “upscale” off-track betting parlor and poker club, with about 50 tables, that could earn the Agua Calientes “a couple of million a year.”

“I spent about 15 grand doing a proposal,” he said. “But I’m like the girl at the dance. I haven’t been asked to come and dance yet.”

While Hardie would prefer a freeway location, managers of the Commerce Casino--the other large Los Angeles-area card parlor--reportedly have expressed interest in the historic Spa Hotel on tribal land in downtown Palm Springs, the site of mineral hot springs that gave the city its name.

Some in the local business community had been urging the Agua Calientes to institute gambling to boost a tourist trade hurt by the recession and competition from newer, more fashionable resorts in nearby Rancho Mirage and La Quinta.

Many think gambling “would be a significant benefit to the local economy--and a fairly quick one,” said Kay Hazen, president of the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Bono has been a lonely dissenting voice. He complained that the Agua Calientes announced their new policy without alerting him, and criticized the federal law that allows Indians to institute gambling without local approval.

“When (the government) says Indian land, the vision is of a reservation off I-10 for a bingo parlor,” Bono said. But with the Indian land here including some of the most desirable in the city, he noted, “It will have a tremendous effect on the future, on the survival of Palm Springs.”

Not only the Indians were angered by the comments of Bono, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate this year.

One city councilman said Bono’s “ludicrous statement” would alienate the Indians by challenging their most cherished possession--sovereignty.

“This is a tribal vote,” said Mayor Pro Tem Tuck Broich. “The city has no control over what the Indians do on their land--none.”

Broich and two other council members signed a letter of apology to the tribe, recognizing its “sovereign control” over its land and concluding, “We look forward to a positive relationship.”

That may take some work.

“I took offense. Tribal members took offense,” said Milanovich, who is in his eighth year as tribal chairman.

As tribal leaders saw it, Bono had appealed to stereotypes of depressed, wayward Indians by suggesting they might build a dingy poker parlor unbefitting Palm Springs’ glamorous image.

Nothing could be more insulting to a tribe with the reputation as one of the most conservative, and best managed, in the country. What’s more, the Agua Calientes for decades have tied their prosperity to that of Palm Springs--much as their land is interwoven with that of non-Indians.

A century ago, the federal government created a unique reservation here by giving the Cahuilla Indians every other square mile--a total of 26,000 acres--of what then was worthless desert. The checkerboard pattern of ownership has largely remained, even as Palm Springs developed into a resort area.

By 1959, most of the tribal land had been divided among members, leaving just four rugged canyons and the mineral springs area as communal property. Federal courts declared the Indians exempt from local zoning, but the Agua Calientes agreed in the 1970s to a close working relationship with Palm Springs: City officials would screen development proposals but the tribe would have veto power.

The Palm Springs Convention Center, many leading hotels and golf resorts sit on Indian land.

Nevertheless, like any landlords, the Indians have felt the impact of a recession. “The longer we have empty shops on Palm Canyon Drive . . . it hurts us as property owners,” Milanovich said.

Then there is the increasing gap between younger tribe members and those owning choice land. Many “born after 1959 are landless or moneyless,” said Andreas, the tribal historian.

Thus the new look at Indian gambling, which has grown into a $1-billion industry nationwide. The Agua Calientes say they learned from the mistakes of neighboring tribes, such as the Morongo and Cabazon bands, that endured lawsuits and scandals after allowing gambling on Indian land.

A Cabazon poker parlor in Indio was opened a decade ago by an organized crime figure, later ousted by the tribe. The Morongo band was shaken when a member opened a bingo hall without tribal approval.

Unlike some other tribes, Milanovich said, the Agua Calientes would not relinquish control of gambling to questionable outsiders. “We are not going to turn over a key and say, ‘Send us a check every month,’ ” he said.

Bono also should have known, Milanovich said, that the Agua Calientes would have no less a goal than the most impressive Indian gambling hall in America.

After all, the tribal chairman said: “There’s only one Palm Springs, Calif.”

The Indians may even have a job for the mayor, whose term expires in April.

If they need a lounge act in their casino, they might consider Sonny, according to Andreas: “If he gets Cher back.”

NEXT STEP

Agua Caliente tribal officials are weighing proposals by outside interests to introduce gambling on Indian land sprinkled throughout Palm Springs. After screening the applicants and evaluating their ideas, the tribe is expected to announce its choices for the first gambling operations to be allowed in the desert resort. Under consideration are plans for a joint arena-card parlor, a casino at the historic The Spa hotel and card parlors along Interstate 10.