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The Cow Creek tribe, which owns the Seven Feathers casino in Canyonville, has protested the Coquille Indian Tribe's "clandestine" attempts to increase the size of a proposed casino project in Medford. "It appears that Coquille has grossly misrepresented to federal, state and local governments the actual scope and scale of its proposed Medford gaming facility," stated a Feb. 21 letter from Dan Courtney, chairman of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, to John Tahsuda, deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Coquille owns a 2.42-acre property on South Pacific Highway that contains Roxy Ann Lanes, which it bought in 2012 for $1.6 million as the site for its proposed casino. The federal government, after seven years of review, has yet to determine whether the property, just north of U.S. Cellular Community Park in south Medford near Interstate 5, should be considered tribal land. In the meantime, the Coquille has bought a number of properties around the casino site, controlling 45 acres either through a lease or land purchase. Over the past three years, the Coquille has bought more than $6 million worth of properties . Ray Doering, communications director for the Coquille Economic Development Corporation, said the letter from the Cow Creek overstates the significance of buying the additional properties. “This letter is just another attempt to delay the project,” he said. The Cow Creek casino in Canyonville is a one-hour drive from the Medford market. Doering said his tribe leased property and bought other properties around the time it first proposed the casino. Even though it has added to its land portfolio since then, the tribe owned or leased 81 percent of the properties in question at the time the tribe proposed the casino project. “We have added a couple of pieces because this process has gone on ridiculously long,” Doering said. Cow Creek officials say the land acquisitions show the Coquille want a much larger facility than the original 2.4-acre casino proposal. The Cow Creek letter states the Coquille informed the U.S. Department of Interior that the tribe wanted to build a “small facility.” “This is vastly beyond the scope of those initial requests,” said Anthony Broadman, attorney for Cow Creek with Galanda Broadman PLCC in Seattle. Broadman thinks that if the Coquille manage to get the 2.4 acres designated as tribal land, the tribe will then seek federal approval to include all 45 acres. Tribal land isn’t subject to the same land-use restrictions and wouldn’t be regulated by the city of Medford. “That will immediately take those 45 acres off the tax rolls,” Broadman said. The Cow Creek maintain the Medford area is not part of the Coquille’s historical lands that would establish a precedent for other tribes to expand their boundaries as well. “This is just bad for the whole system of tribal government gaming,” Broadman said. “It will also push other tribes to create new tribal lands.” Doering said the tribe’s intention is to build a casino on the original 2.4-acre property and isn’t looking to expand the tribal lands any further. As an example, he said the Mill Casino, also owned by the tribe, has an RV park next door that is not on tribal land. He said the tribe plans to go through all the usual planning processes of the city of Medford to develop the other lots surrounding the casino. The other properties are owned by different corporate entities created by the tribe because they will likely be developed differently from each other, Doering said. Some of the ideas for the other properties include a restaurant, hotel or other kinds of entertainment. Before that happens, Doering said the tribe has started an economic study to figure out what works best for Medford. “We’re trying to determine what’s going to pencil out and what’s going to work for the community,” he said. “What does Medford want?” The federal government still isn’t close to signing off on the tribe’s request, Doering said. Before it could be approved, the federal government needs to publish the draft environmental review, hold public hearings on the draft review and then write the final environmental review document. So far, the casino proposal has drawn criticism from local and state officials. Doering said the Coquille are looking at the Medford market to help shore up the tribe’s economic needs. In a business plan from 2013, the Coquille projected a shortfall of $1 million for tribal programs. The tribe has more than 1,000 members, with Coos County having the most members and Jackson County with the second highest. The tribe anticipates its shortfall to increase by $13 million annually in 2022. Adding another casino will help with the shortfall, Doering said. “This project is very important to meeting those needs,” he said. Reach reporter Damian Mann at 541-776-4476 or [email protected] Follow him on www.twitter.com.reporterdm.