SOUTH BEND — The mood was celebratory Wednesday at a press conference announcing detailed plans for the Four Winds South Bend casino ... with a caveat.
South Bend Common Council member Oliver Davis, surrounded at the podium by residents from the Rum Village neighborhood he represents, drew laughs when he sang his own version of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood theme song.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg welcomed the 1,200 full-time jobs the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians pledges to initially create, along with 700 jobs during construction, which has already begun.
But there was something notably missing from the presentation of an artist’s rendering of how the casino will look when it opens in early 2018: the 18-story, 500-room hotel that the band described in its application for land trust with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Pokagon officials announced Wednesday that although the bureau required their application to convey the 166-acre site’s full potential, it will be realized only if casino business is good enough. If not, there will be no hotel, event center, or nightclub — amenities that were added incrementally over the past nine years at Four Winds New Buffalo.
To begin, the South Bend site will be larger than Four Winds casinos in Hartford and Dowagiac, but smaller than New Buffalo. South Bend’s gaming floor will begin as 55,000 square feet, compared to 140,000 square feet at New Buffalo.
The Pokagon Band earlier this year pledged to share at least $2 million in gaming revenue annually with the city, or 2 percent of casino profits if that figure is larger. It will also give a combined $5 million over five years to Memorial Children’s Hospital, Boys and Girls Club of St. Joseph County, the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, Jobs for America's Graduates, the YWCA Women's Shelter and South Bend Community School Corp.
After the press event, Buttigieg told The Tribune he’s known all along that the project’s components would be phased in, depending on the casino’s profits.