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Week of July 16, 2002 |
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SPIRIT MOUNTAIN CASINO
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GRAND RONDE, Ore., July 16 (UPI) -- With three million
visitors a year, the number one tourist attraction in the state
of Oregon is . . . a casino.
"We beat out a waterfall," says Michael Moore, the affable
redheaded CEO and President of Spirit Mountain Casino.
It's not that Oregon is short on tourist attractions. It's
just that the reservation land owned by the Confederated Tribes
of Grand Ronde is located at an especially strategic place on
State Highway 18--halfway between Portland and the beach--and the
meandering two-lane road is just annoying enough for travellers
to rejoice when they see the flat sandy building with a columned
portico popping suddenly out of the woods.
As Indian casinos go, it's neither the largest nor the
smallest--it could almost be the prototype for Typical American
Indian Casino--but what's a little eerie about it is how calm it
is. Spirit Mountain is one of the first casinos in the country to
go all-coinless, all-the-time, so that its 1500 slot machines hum
and gurgle and buzz, but you never hear that satisfying sound of
a thousand quarters plummeting into the noisy steel tray. (In Las
Vegas, by contrast, the trays are designed to be as noisy as
possible, on the theory that it stimulates more gambling.)
"When I got here, I was amazed at how efficient this
operation is," says Moore, a veteran casino executive who's
worked in Reno, Atlantic City and Vegas. "We have very loyal
customers and we spend very little money to get them. We have no
cashback. We have no expensive promotions. And people pay for the
bus. (They do get a funbook worth about $20, including a food
discount.) We give no credit. We don't cash checks. It's
literally a cash business. You know what it reminds me of?
Harrah's Tahoe in the sixties. The same kind of casual, informal
feel, where everyone is family. If employees get sick here, the
customers actually send them cards and flowers."
Offering virtually nothing that a Vegas casino offers--not
even complimentary cocktails due to a tribal rule--Spirit
Mountain is still the most profitable casino in a state that has
six other Indian gambling joints, including the rival Chinook
Winds Casino and Convention Center, which is another hour down
the highway on the beach in Lincoln City.
Since most of the business is from Portland, Spirit Mountain
has the advantage of being the most convenient place to gamble in
the state. A drive from Portland to Chinook Winds would take two
to three hours--too far to bop down there on a weeknight--and
Spirit Mountain no doubt picks off a lot of motorists who get 60
miles down the road and decide, "Why drive any farther?"
"We do share some customers with Chinook," says Moore. "Many
Oregonians have summer homes in Lincoln City, so they spend the
warm months on the beach. We have a far better product, though.
They have a hard time at Chinook in the wintertime. We just look
at it as one more reason to come down here."
On a recent day that was grey, misty and damp--not uncommon
for Oregon logging country--the crowd at Spirit Mountain was
reminiscent of Atlantic City. Almost all of them were day-
trippers, they stayed about four hours, the only "comp" they
cared about was free food, and they tended to be older people, 50
and up.
As you might expect, this is almost entirely a slot-machine
business--90 per cent, according to Moore, with Spirit Mountain's
50 table games standing empty much of the time. Unlike other
western states, though, video poker is not such a big deal here.
The reason is that Oregon allows up to five video poker machines
in every bar, and the easy availability of it has created a sort
of video poker stigma. Oregonians refer to it as "video crack,"
as though it's a low-class form of gambling, and debates are
periodically waged about eliminating so-called "convenience
gambling" entirely.
The result is that the day-trippers pour into Spirit
Mountain to cadge a free buffet and play the cheapest games of
them all--nickel and penny slots. "We're the opposite of Nevada,"
says Moore, referring to the trade's heavy marketing of dollar
slots and relegation of the lower denominations to small slot-
machine ghettos. "We're also very heavy on video. We have 1500
machines, and 80 per cent of those are multi-line video
machines."
For the most part these aren't the kind of machines to offer
big jackpots, but the casino is tied in electronically to a
progressive jackpot shared by Indian casinos nationwide. Since
opening in 1995, Spirit Mountain has had six "primary hits" on
the progressive--payouts of $100,000 or more--and all six winners
have not only agreed to publicity, but actually wanted to have
their pictures taken. (In Las Vegas, by contrast, big winners
often want to remain anonymous.)
The success of Spirit Mountain has been a boon for the
Confederated Tribes, which is actually five surviving bands of
Pacific Northwest Indians called the Molalla, the Rogue, the
Chasta, the Umpqua and the Kalapuya. Altogether it's about 4,000
people who share the profits of the casino every July in a
generous distribution of 25 per cent. They put 6 per cent into a
Community Fund, given to local charities and used for civic
improvement projects, and the remaining 69 per cent goes to
tribal services and their main business, logging.
Oregon, almost alone among casino states, doesn't tax
casinos directly, so the effective tax rate is only 6 per cent--
good news for slots players, who don't have to put up with the
extremely tight payout schedules of states like Illinois and
Indiana.
The casino itself is just the basics--a beautiful lobby with
a skylight rotunda done in baby blues and light woods, a roomy
casino floor with a planetarium ceiling and festive neon columns,
a buffet, a small steak and seafood restaurant, a Starbucks (with
penny slots on premises), and a deli. Spirit Mountain Lodge is a
100-room hotel reserved mostly for high rollers and done up in
rustic hunting-lodge style, complete with headboards engraved
with coyotes and a coyote sculpture fountain in the lobby.
Entertainment is minimal. They do have a lounge, and about
six times a year they convert the 1500-seat bingo hall into a
showroom for B-level acts like Tony Orlando, B.B. King,
Gallagher, Jeff Foxworthy and Colin Ray. All the shows are on
Thursday nights to draw midweek business, since the weekends are
already packed.
With so many people obviously comfortable here, you would
think they would be thinking about expansion, but that's not such
an easy thing to do in environment-crazy Oregon. "We're thinking
about it," says Moore, "but we have problems. We have limited
land and water here, and we're dealing with protected plants. The
sheer expense of expansion would make it difficult. You have to
get tribal approval, EPA approval, federal approval, state
approval, county approval. It might happen, but if so, it will
happen slowly."
Spirit Mountain also benefits from being right smack dab in
the middle of the Oregon wine country, with 100 wineries in the
area and lots of bed-and-breakfasts trying to create the kind of
yuppie tourism common in the Napa Valley of California. Add to
that the recent reconstruction of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose,
which was disassembled and then put back together in a special
hangar in nearby McMinnville, and they have the beginnings of an
overnight-tourist business. (Spirit Mountain has already
installed a "Spruce Goose Progressive" bank of slot machines.)
For the time being, though, Spirit Mountain has the
character of a locals joint, even with all the midweek buses and
the drive-ins from Portland and Salem. "I like working here,"
says Moore. "I certainly don't miss the alcohol that you have in
the traditional casino business. No drinking problems. Quiet.
Non-rowdy. Family-oriented."
The first thing you see when you enter is a bronze statue of
Martha Jane Sands, a 19th century tribal member, weaving a basket
with her attentive daughter standing nearby. The Confederated
Tribes don't weave baskets anymore, but Martha Jane looks totally
at home. It's a safe, cozy, eminently respectable place. If it
weren't for the occasional ding of a slots payoff, you could
almost hear a gurgling Oregon salmon stream. Is this the
neighborhood gambling place of the future? For better or worse, I
think it is.
* © Copyright 2002 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs |