From NewsOK.com:
Zoning, land trust could cloud Shawnee casino plan
Landless the Shawnee Tribe is, and landless it will remain for some time. The tribe faces legal obstacles in its aim to develop land along Interstate 35 as a hotel-casino attraction and tribal headquarters.
Gardner-Tanenbaum Group sold the 104 acres on the west side of I-35 between Britton Road and Wilshire Boulevard to investors who are working with the tribe to get it put into trust, a requirement before the tribe can develop it.
The land is zoned for industrial use, not entertainment or retail. Gardner-Tanenbaum marketed it for several years as a prime Interstate site for warehouses or distribution centers.
Getting the zoning changed shouldn’t be too hard since the tribe has been working with city planners as it looked for land in Oklahoma City, said Greg Pitcher, head of the tribe’s economic development arm.
“In talking to the city and choosing a site, we took all that into consideration,” Pitcher said, in an effort to locate a site that specifically would not be at cross purposes with the city’s goals. “We assume the city would not oppose” a zoning change request, he said.
City planning director John Dugan said Wednesday that his staff had had no discussions with tribal officials — that they knew of. He said city planning staff deal with many planning and zoning inquiries daily.
Dugan said that if the land is put in a trust, it might supersede local zoning. In that case, Pitcher said the tribe still would work closely with the city.
“Our interest in the beginning has been to sign an intergovernmental agreement that would exceed their guidelines,” Pitcher said. “We’re going to exceed any requirement the city has, in doing this.”
Pitcher said he could not outline the argument the Shawnee Tribe will make to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in seeking that the land be put in trust — because it’s confidential.
But, he said, the tribe only appears to be caught by conflicting law.
The federal law that restored the tribe by severing it from the Cherokee Nation in 2000 forbids it from developing land in any other tribes’ jurisdiction, he said. That made Oklahoma City attractive, since the city is within no tribe’s jurisdiction.
BIA rules generally state that to have land put in trust, a tribe must have a historical tie to it, and the Shawnee Tribe appears to have no historical tie to the land on I-35.
But Pitcher said the issues are much more complex than that, partly because the Shawnee Tribe, while restored, is landless, and partly because federal laws in Oklahoma surrounding Indian tribes, trust land and what they can do with it are different from every other part of the country.
Turtle Talk 