The Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians has agreed to settle a lawsuit against two local casinos for $79 million, which had been holding up building permanent locations for MotorCity and Greektown.
The tribe still remains at odds with the city's third casino, MGM Grand Detroit, and will continue efforts to block MGM's permanent gaming facility.
The tribe, which has 430 members and a casino in Watersmeet in the Upper Peninsula, filed suit in 1997, saying its constitutional rights were violated when the city gave license preferences to MotorCity and Greektown casino ownership groups.
Greektown Casino and Detroit Entertainment LLC, the owner of MotorCity Casino, will each pay $39.5 million to the tribe over the next 25 years under a deal hammered out with help from Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
"We finally moved past this long, six-year debate. It's finally time to put some shovels in the ground," says Kilpatrick, who hopes groundbreaking for the facilities that will total at least 800 hotel rooms could take place around year's end.
Kilpatrick says no payment will be made by the city. In exchange for the payments, the tribe will drop all claims against the two casinos, the mayor adds.
The Lac Vieux tribe claimed in its lawsuit that Detroit had stacked the deck with its licensing ordinance. Allowing three casinos, the ordinance gave preference to two companies that helped support the successful 1996 statewide referendum that allowed off-reservation gambling in the city.
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