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The Gun Lake Casino: Hope and Hesitation for a Struggling Community

In the middle of West Michigan, about halfway between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, lies the tiny town of Bradley. It is small enough to miss—just a highway exit and a four-way stop, a gas station, a fundamentalist Christian church, and a Buddhist temple. Bradley is seven miles down a winding, two lane road from Gun Lake, a large inland lake which was once the home of a tribe of Native Americans and became a tourist destination for West Michigan residents. But in February of 2011, a Native American casino, operated by the local Gun Lake Pottawatomi Tribe, opened its doors and promised to change the area forever.

The opening of the Gun Lake Casino was long in coming; for ten years, a battle raged between supporters of the casino and opponents of it, and it took years of court cases and appeals before the tribe could break ground on the gaming establishment. I grew up just under ten miles from the location of the casino, in the close-knit community of Gun Lake, and for most of my childhood signs stood in nearly every yard, touting slogans like “CasiNOW—We want jobs” and “CasiNO—Keep our community healthy.” My family was rather ambivalent to the fight and the idea of a casino, and like most other people in the area, we never thought the Gun Lake Pottawatomi Tribe would actually get the approval to open their casino. Several times a week, on our way to southbound interstate 131, we drove past the decaying manufacturing building and wild land that was chosen as the site of the casino, and the sight of the empty lot familiarized itself in our minds.

Casinos are a point of hot contention all across Michigan, especially since the beginning of the crippling recession in 2001. The state grants gaming licenses to Native American tribes, in part as a means of reparation for past injustices committed against tribal people. Casinos have sprung up in recent years in all areas of the state: in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula, the struggling southwestern town of Battle Creek, and Michigan's infamous large city Detroit. Those who oppose casinos do so for many reasons, though in the case of the Gun Lake Casino, the arguments against centered around moral concerns. The casino was seen by many as an invitation of sin and the approval of licentious behavior such as drinking and gambling. Speaking about a recent casino proposal in the state capital, Jessica Wilson, a former resident of Gun Lake said: “Lansing doesn't have the same morality factor that this part of the state does. There is a lot more issue with the idea of gambling and drinking and smoking and this environment of immorality.” In a place known colloquially as the “Bible Belt,” where the Christian Reformed Church reigns supreme, the immorality of a casino was a major concern for residents.

The people who supported the casino through its ten year battle for inception were mostly interested in the revenue and jobs the casino would bring to the area. Gun Lake, like other aging tourist towns around the state, was hit particularly hard by the recession, as people from out of town stopped traveling to the lake to spend their dwindling expendable income. Most Gun Lake businesses must survive off of six months of business, from the warmer months of April to October, and each year more businesses cut back hours, change hands, or close their doors forever. The Gun Lake Casino was seen by many as the answer to the area's economic problems, promising to create at least 700 new jobs and bring in millions of dollars to the community each day. According to Edward Wilson, a business banker in Kalamazoo, “the casino makes 1.5 million a day.” He said that he was acquainted with one of the casino's accountants, “a woman who counts their money, and they take in one million from slots and a half million from card tables each day. That's not even including food and drink.” Far busier in its first few months of being open than the tribe had expected, the casino hired close to 1000 workers from Barry and Allegan counties, as well as the Grand Rapids area, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

However, other issues still face the success of the casino and its impact on its nearby towns, which go beyond simple dollars and cents. One of the major concerns of residents and business owners is the effect that the casino will have on Gun Lake, a full seven miles from the casino. The Gun Lake Tribe promised residents that business at the casino would increase tourism to Gun Lake, but some people remain skeptical as to whether this will be the case. Dan Evert, a Lansing resident and longtime visitor to Gun Lake, had this to say: “I've been to Gun Lake a hundred times because my uncle has two cottages on it, but if you don't have property or know somebody with property, is it too far of a stretch to say there are not a lot of reasons for you to be on Gun Lake?” The nearest hotels lie thirty miles up the highway from the casino, so people interested in staying around the area have only a couple of small campgrounds and the trucker Gun Lake Motel as options for lodging. Beyond the concern for economic growth and renewal, many people oppose the new casino because of the social impact of casinos on communities. “They've done a lot of studies on Indian Casinos, mainly in Minnesota, and they found that the net gain from these places is overwhelmingly negative,” said Edward Wilson. Gambling and alcohol addictions run rampant in communities with casinos, and for an area already plagued by high levels of poverty and a growing meth problem, these negative externalities are hard to face.

So how is the casino being received by local people, now that it has been open for a few months? In order to answer this question, I went back to my hometown. I began my trip by taking the long way from the highway, driving on Lakeshore Drive and Chief Noonday Road (named after a leader of the Gun Lake Pottawatomi Tribe) around Gun Lake. After having been gone for nearly a year, I saw that Gun Lake had in some ways undergone radical changes, and in other ways, changed very little. Several diners which thrived just nine months before had closed down, and one long abandoned restaurant, formerly called O'Niel's Pub, was reopened under the name Sand Bar; around here, it seems that the success of a restaurant or business depends mostly on luck. A beach store that once sold designer swimsuits to tourists and local housewives shut down last summer, but next door is a flea market, which had expanded its hours consistently over the two years it has been open. Perhaps the clearest sign that economic relief has not yet come to Gun Lake was the abundance of 'for sale' signs in yards. Nearly every fourth house on the lake was for sale, and one development, started just a few years ago, lies abandoned; only two houses were ever completed, and they sit at the back of a long drive, surrounded by acres of empty fields, filling in slowly with long grasses and stunted trees.

Not long ago, the site of the casino resembled that of the unfinished housing development. Early in the stages of development, a large track of land was purchased by the Gun Lake Tribe from a manufacturing company that went broke, and for years an empty warehouse sat decaying, surrounded by a marsh that teemed with local wildlife reclaiming the land. Then, in September of 2009, ground was broken on a massive parking lot, and construction, though painfully slow, began. My trips home for holidays and birthdays usually took me down the Bradley exit of 131, right past the casino site and its construction. For months, the parking lot stood alone, a giant concrete sea in the middle of nowhere. Then the existing buildings were torn down and a foundation was laid for the casino. Soon after, walls went up, and for months the building was a bright yellow shell of insulation. Two lanes were added to the road in front of the casino in anticipation of increased traffic and stadium lighting reached into the unblemished sky. An old coworker of mine lives with her family in a farmhouse right across the highway overpass from the casino, and she told me that “I never thought in my life that there would be light pollution in Bradley.” The stars were blocked from sight.

The completed casino looks more like a suburban shopping center than a Las Vegas style casino, more like Kohl's than the Bellagio. The parking lot covers most of the thirty-five acre plot of land, and it can accommodate several thousand cars, monitored by several full-time sherifs hired by the casino. Only people 21 and older are allowed into the casino, where identification is checked at each entrance, so no families or local teenagers will be able to spend their free time and money inside its sandstone walls. One teenager, a friend of the girl who lives next to the casino, said the age restriction “seems really wrong though because they are missing out on so much business.”

Immediately upon entering the doors, the casino visitor's senses are assaulted in every possible way. At least three different songs play on the loud speakers, layered underneath a general ambiance of twinkling noises and the beeping and ringing of slot machines. On top of that is the sound of hundreds of people talking—it is cacophonous. Lights flash on and off, and the carpet, walls, and slot machines are so full of busy patters that a person's eye has no idea where to go. Jayne Seymour, of Wayland, MI said that the sounds and sights of the casino were “overwhelming, in a sensory way. So I don't know how long I would want to stay.”

Cocktail waitresses scurry around the slot machines and tables, handing out drinks and hobbling on their mandatory black heels. Their uniforms, which consist of a tight brown dress and cleavage enhancing red vest, do not leave much room for imagination or breathing. The casino features two bars, one with nightly performances by mediocre cover bands, an upscale restaurant, and a mall-style food court with refreshments from Tim Horton's, Coldstone, Villa Pizza, and Johnny Rocket's.

On a Saturday night, the crowd is large and varied. The people at the casino “are clearly not from Allegan and Barry county. Because there are people of various colors, not just caucasians,” says Jessica Wilson, a Barry county native. She describes the crowd as being made up of “people in really obnoxious, outdated U of M clothing, overweight, sweatshirts. There is no dress code, clearly.” Though some visitors are well dressed, they tend to gather in the restaurants, bars, and at card tables. Average folks sit at slot machines, feeding their money into a bottomless pit which rarely pays out. The casino is “mostly filled with people who can't and shouldn't be here” says Dan Evert, who also says that it is “hard to get a feel of what it is going to be like in six months.” It is likely that the novelty of the casino will wear off in the coming months, and as it does, the casino will have to rely more and more heavily on the local population to turn a profit. Issues of the sustainability of this situation are troubling. As Evert projects the future of the casino, he muses. “When the newness wears off...sustainability is going to be really tough.”

Reactions to the casino are mixed. Jayne Seymour spoke of the positive economic impact of the casino over desert and coffee in the casino restaurant. “It's great to see so many people working; that's what I really like seeing. And a lot of them are middle aged people. That's good.” Others remain unconvinced that the casino will have any lasting effect on Gun Lake. “If you live in downtown Grand Rapids, why would you go out there?” questioned Jessica Wilson. However, most residents recognize the newness and express that there is nothing to do but wait and see what will come of the Gun Lake Casino. Said the local teenager who is still too young to check out the casino for herself: “I voted against it. I understand the other side's view and am open to it, but we'll wait and see what comes of it.”

All that is certain for Gun Lake, the casino, and the people whose daily lives will be affected by it, is that they will try to do the best with the hand they have been dealt, playing against the odds and a dealer whose interest is still unclear. The Gun Lake Casino is what it is, and most residents just want to see their home restored to health and prosperity, so they look to the blaring lights and full parking lot of the casino for hope. Beyond the parking lot, in what remains of a once untouched marsh and woods, the chirping of spring peepers can just be heard over the rush of cars on the highway.