As Sky River Casino marks first anniversary, here’s what it means for the city and the tribe
One year ago, four words posted to social media signaled Sky River Casino’s opening in Elk Grove: “We’re here. We’re open.” Those two sentences last August ushered in the newest entry in the Sacramento region’s crowded casino sweepstakes.
On Thursday, the Wilton Rancheria casino marked its first anniversary by restating plans for a major expansion — a 300-room hotel, pool, spa and entertainment center promised at its 2021 groundbreaking, along with a 1,700-car parking garage, said casino chief operating officer Chris Gibase. New wrinkles include a cigar-and-spirits lounge, The Humidor, projected to open at year’s end.
“The original plan hasn’t changed,” Wilton Rancheria tribal chairman Jesus Tarango said. “Just to know what we’re building to complement what we have here, it makes me feel good about what’s happening. We’re giving different demographics a place to be.”
Tarango looked on with pride at what’s been built and his Wilton Rancheria tribe’s long journey to get to this point.
“It’s a way to get our way of life back,” Tarango said Thursday in an interview with The Sacramento Bee.
The Wilton Rancheria and partners Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming broke ground on the $400 million, 100,000-square-foot casino complex in March 2021. The site, which formally opened Aug. 15 of last year, now employs some 1,600 workers with hundreds of others anticipated to join the rolls once the casino expands.
Sky River has established itself in a crowded gaming market including mainstays Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln; Red Hawk Resort and Casino in Shingle Springs; and relative newcomer Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sacramento at Fire Mountain in Wheatland.
Sky River did not supply attendance figures, but its tables, games, promotions and events paid out more than $250 million in its first year of operation, casino officials said.
The Wilton Rancheria has pledged to invest $130 million to Elk Grove and Sacramento County over the next 20 years toward roads, public safety and other services including a Cosumnes Fire Department fire station slated to open in 2024 on nearby Poppy Ridge Drive. The first annual round of payments to Elk Grove — $4 million to start, but increasing over time through mutual agreement — flowed into Elk Grove coffers this year.
“It’s those things that really highlight the commitment of tribes and putting back into the community — the fire department, police department, schools,” Tarango said.
‘A way to get our way of life back’
But the first anniversary of Sky River, its name an homage to the Wilton Rancheria’s ancestral home along the nearby Cosumnes River, is also a milestone for a tribe that has trod a rocky path to federal recognition and self-sufficiency, Tarango said.
The Wilton Rancheria were first classified by the federal government in the 1920s as “homeless, vagrant Indians,” he said. Its people were self-governing until 1959, when its federal recognition as a sovereign tribe was taken away — along with the obligations of the federal government to the tribe — launching a grinding, 50-year battle to regain that status.
“When you talk about that fight that the elders led, the basic things that our elders wanted for the people was housing, health care and education,” Tarango said. “So when you look at what we’re celebrating today, the casinos are like what the buffalo meant to the Lakota, the Plains people: It’s a way of life, a way to sustain life. It fed them. It clothed them. It housed them. The casinos are that next buffalo for us.
“It’s a way to get our way of life back.”
The tribe has about 700 members, according to its website, residing in southern portions of Sacramento County.
For the Wilton Rancheria, tribal leaders said that could mean improved housing, financial help and school supplies for its youngest members, health care for families and elders. Its government has seated departments of housing, education, finance and health to direct policy, address need and provide resources to its hundreds of members.
“With (Sky River) coming along, we have unrestricted funds. The tribe can get really creative and create different programs for our membership — scholarships for our students, money for their school supplies. We can talk about health care,” Tarango said. “One of our goals is to provide health care for all of our members. Housing — the tribe now has the opportunity to get creative about those different things. We’re excited to see that means.”
Wilton Rancheria vice-chairwoman Racquel Williams said she has a pretty good idea of what it means: It’s a dream decades in the making.
“It’s a casino, a business,” Williams said. “But it also shows that we can take care of our own.”
.JPG)