Casino projects in time crunch to meet Super-Bowl deadline

DETROIT -- Even if the MotorCity and Greektown casinos started building their more grandiose properties today, it still will be cutting it close to open in time for the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.

Greektown said Tuesday that its $450 million project "is expected to take about 30 months to complete."

The National Football League's championship game is in February 2006, which is in 27 months.

"Certainly, we will work as hard as we can to complete the project in time for the Super Bowl," but doing so will be a challenge, Greektown CEO Bernard Bouschor said.

Super Bowl hosts are particularly excited over the 800 hotel rooms that Greektown and MotorCity would add to the market.

On Tuesday, the city announced that the Lac Vieux Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians had settled its case against two of the city's three casinos.

Greektown will move from its existing location to a seven-acre site near Ford Field, near Interstate 375 and Gratiot. The city's only privately owned casino also is finalizing its team of contractors and subcontractors.

Construction at MotorCity Casino isn't expected to take as long because it is expanding at its existing site off the Lodge Freeway.

Construction can begin on the casinos shortly after zoning requests are approved by the Detroit City Council. That, however, is unlikely to happen until January. The council is set to begin a monthlong recess Friday.

The lawsuit settlement also must be approved by a federal court before an injunction can be lifted to allow the casinos to start construction. Court approval of the settlement is expected to be perfunctory.

In September 2002, a U.S. appeals court told the city it couldn't issue building permits for permanent gambling halls until the case between the city and the Lac Vieux tribe was resolved.

The settlement, officially announced Tuesday, "partially compensates the tribe for the violation of its constitutional rights," said Conly Schulte, a lawyer for the tribe. "We are moving forward with our claims against MGM Grand Detroit to obtain an order requiring that its development be subject to a new bidding process."

Under the agreement, MotorCity and Greektown would be exempt from a rebidding process.

"We hope that the two casinos can now move forward with their plans to build permanent facilities and the hotels they said are vital to meeting the needs of Super Bowl 2006," Schulte said.

In a separate agreement, two of the former principals in the Greektown Casino, Ted Gatzaros and Jim Papas, also have agreed to pay a combined $15 million to Lac Vieux, meaning that the Upper Peninsula tribe now has $94 million on the table.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who helped broker the settlement of the lawsuit, called the agreement "a giant step in moving forward for the working men and women in getting them working and getting our economy going."

In recent financial documents, MGM Mirage disclosed it would pay the city up to $20 million to cover costs arising from the Lac Vieux lawsuit, as well as the city's bungled effort to acquire riverfront land for a gambling district.

But, for its part, MGM Grand Detroit didn't think it should be a party to the lawsuit in the first place. It refused to offer a settlement because it said it neither qualified for, nor received, the preference given MotorCity and Greektown investor groups, which financially backed efforts to legalize Detroit casinos. Casino officials are seeking to expedite the case.

"MGM Grand Detroit did not receive any preference in the city of Detroit's casino developer selection process," parent company MGM Mirage said in a prepared statement.

But Lac Vieux claims MGM still benefited from the city's casino selection process -- deemed unconstitutional by two federal courts -- because the city had to approve or reject all three casinos as a group.

MGM Grand Detroit is planning to build across the street from DTE Energy headquarters, just north of its current location on the east side of the Lodge.

Besides additional hotel rooms for Super Bowl guests, the city also wants the permanent casinos open for the tax revenues they'll bring in.

The city currently gets an immediate cut of nearly 10 percent of whatever gamblers leave in the slot machines or on the tables. That amounted to about $100 million in gaming tax revenues for the city last year.

Existing casinos each have about 75,000 square feet of gambling space; in the permanent projects, they'll be allowed to have 100,000 square feet, which means the city conceivably could get more in gaming tax revenues.

The three temporary casinos have no hotel rooms, but each permanent gambling hall will have 400-room hotels. Generally, the longer a guest stays, the more they gamble -- and the more the city can get in gaming taxes.

The casinos also are on the hook to pay the city $400 million to $600 million from their profits over the next three decades. The money will be used to help restore Detroit parks.