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Stacy D. Stumbo The Roseburg News-Review February 14, 2003
CANYONVILLE — Carl Salter has been spending too many late nights at the casino.The executive director of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians Gaming and Regulatory Commission has been surrounded by the blinking lights and sounding bells of slot machines for days, while he makes sure a 12,300-square-foot addition to the Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville is compliant with state and federal standards.
The retired Oregon State Police officer has been making sure 264 newly installed slot machines operate correctly.New poker room: While the finishing touches are added to the newly opened poker room at Seven Feathers Hotel and Casino Resort, dealer Jim Otter finishes up dealing a game of poker on Thursday in Canyonville.
Photo by STEPHEN BRASHEAR
The new gaming area is part of a 34,500-square-foot expansion to the existing 198,000-square-foot Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort that began in May 2002 and is slated for competition in June.
The existing gift shop will be moved closer to the hotel entrance, and the vacant space will become a nonsmoking gaming area that will feature slots and blackjack. Additionally, the poker area has been moved to a glass-encased room with a stone hearth. The old poker room will be converted to a sports bar.
Tribe government operations officer Michael Rondeau said just as the project began, the tribe was completing work on the 7 Feathers Truck & Travel Center in Canyonville.
“This has taken a lot out of all of us,” he said.
The tribe will also relocate its convention center sales office from a small house across town to a spacious addition to the existing building.
Rondeau said use of the convention center has grown 30 percent in the past year. It has hosted the Greatest of the Grape event for wine aficionados, gun shows, state and educational conventions and even a mounted posse gathering.
“We’re hoping the new convention center (in Roseburg) will complement our business here,” Rondeau said. “And also that it will provide a little more variety up there. We’re really focused on drawing conventions from a regional clientele both here and in Roseburg.”
Rondeau said growth of the facility will bring new jobs to the community. The 65 employees the tribe plans to hire by June will increase Seven Feathers staff to almost 900 people.
While Tribal Chairwoman Sue Shaffer surveyed the addition, she noted that the flashing lights and endless rows of slot machines made it impossible to see from one end of the structure to the other.
“Who’d of thought it in 1992,” she said, recalling the first humble bingo parlor the tribe opened. “It’s like Vegas.”
Back then, Gov. Barbara Roberts opposed plans to offer casino-style gaming in Oregon. Under Class III gaming statutes, tribes must negotiate a compact with the governor before they can offer anything other than bingo play. After nine months of negotiations, the U.S. Department of the Interior approved the Cow Creek compact.
The tribe used a $1.5 million settlement it received in the U.S. Court of Claims to help fund the parlor, and entered into a partnership with British American Bingo.
Shaffer said the 1,147-member tribe has since ended its agreement with British American Bingo, and operates the casino on its own.
Thirty-eight new varieties of slot machines will be featured in the casino’s addition, many of which have never been played in Oregon before. Some will take 1 cent, 2 cents, nickels, quarters, dollar bills and $5.
Although the tribe owns 13 businesses, the casino remains its top money-maker, attracting more than a million visitors annually.
