With funding secured, Wilton Rancheria and Boyd Gaming target 2022 opening of Sacramento-area casino

March 1, 2021 6:37 PM
  • CDC Gaming Reports
March 1, 2021 6:37 PM
  • CDC Gaming Reports

Tribal leaders of Wilton Rancheria said Sunday they secured third-party funding for the future $500 million Wilton Rancheria Resort and Casino in Elk Grove, California.

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On Monday, development partner Boyd Gaming confirmed through its 10-K annual report that the parties want to break ground by the end of March, targeting an opening date in the second half of 2022.

The tribe will announce a ground-breaking ceremony “in the coming days”.

“With this location of a major highway just south of Sacramento, this resort will be the closest Class 3 casino to Downtown Sacramento in the South Bay Area, positioning us for a strong start after scheduled opening in the second half of 2022,” said Boyd Gaming CEO Keith E. Smith in the company’s Q4 2020 earnings call.

The project has been in the works for years, with Boyd Gaming funding the $35.1 million acquisition of land for the Wilton Rancheria casino in January 2017 and the National Indian Gaming Commission approving Boyd’s management contract with Wilton Rancheria in October 2018. The groundbreaking was scheduled for the summer of 2020, but following the COVID-19 pandemic the tribe put the project on hold due a freeze of the credit markets that finance projects of this size.

Mention of the casino was notably absent for Boyd’s Q2 2020 earnings. But in the company’s Q3 2020 earnings, Smith said “We are putting the final pieces in place to allow the Tribe to secure project financing in the next several months.”

California is the nation’s largest Indian casino market, accounting for more than 26% of all U.S. tribal gaming revenues. According to economist Alan Meister in the annual Casino City Indian Gaming Industry Report, the state’s Indian casinos produced $8.4 billion in 2016, roughly $2 billion more than the Las Vegas Strip. According to the report, California tribal casinos produced $965.9 million in non-gaming revenue, a figure that Meister predicts will continue to climb.

When completed the Wilton Rancheria casino, located near Highway 99, a major freeway in the Sacramento area, will immediately compete with the United Auburn Tribe’s Thunder Valley Resort and two casinos that opened in 2019: Harrah’s Northern California, which doesn’t have a hotel but has 950 slots, and the $440 million Hard Rock Sacramento which has 1,600 slots and a hotel.