SEQUIM — Construction of a $7.5 million, 5,000-square-foot addition to 7 Cedars Casino in Blyn should start in March, Ron Allen, Jamestown S’Klallam tribal chairman, said Tuesday.
Speaking to more than 50 people at the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon at SunLand Golf & Country Club, Allen said a 300-room, seven-story twin-tower hotel resort planned south of the casino is still five years away.
Difficult loan financing must be secured, and a wastewater reclamation system such as the city of Sequim’s and a 600-car underground parking garage must be built for the hotel, Allen said.
“We’re not letting go. If you’ve got a vision, don’t let go,” Allen said of the tribe’s long-term intentions to build the destination resort that he describes as a “four-star” world-class project.
He said the tribe decided to build a wastewater reclamation system specifically for the hotel resort because hooking up to the city of Sequim’s newly expanded water reclamation and sewer system would be too costly.
Meanwhile, the casino addition will add a wing to the bingo hall and a restaurant.
The facility, expected to be completed by next summer, will extend into the parking lot and bring the casino area to about 20,000 square feet, Allen said.
“We will expand it 30 to 35 feet to the east in the parking lot, gut it, put in new restrooms, a bar and more card tables and games,” Allen said after his presentation, as he leaned on a cane after recent knee surgery.
The addition is the latest in a string of tribal developments in Blyn since the 1990s.
That includes the tribal campus, art gallery, community center, the casino, Longhouse Market and gas station, and Clallam County Fire District No. 3’s most easterly fire station.
“People give us a bad time that we are buying Blyn, and we don’t argue with that,” Allen said.
“We are trying to buy Blyn.”
The tribe owns more than 20 acres along the head of Sequim Bay along U.S. Highway 101.
Allen, who has served as the tribe’s chairman since 1977 and the tribe’s executive director since 1982, said the tribe today has about 600 members.
The tribe also has built the Jamestown Family Health Clinic off North Fifth Avenue in Sequim that Allen described as “comfortable” in its design.
The clinic provides general health care services and a 24-hour emergency care. It accepts Medicare and Medicaid, he said, and serves the community at-large.
Also among its holdings is the former Dungeness Golf Course at 1965 Woodcock Road in Sequim, renamed the Cedars at Dungeness after the tribe bought it in December 2006.
Plans for the future could include another nine holes for a golf “academy” to teach newcomers to the game how to drive, pitch and putt.
Allen reiterated the tribe’s interest in developing the former mill site owned by Rayonier, which is on Port Angeles’ east side.
“Port Angeles could be another Bar Harbor,” Allen said of the quaint seaside village in Maine.
“We think Port Angeles is a diamond in the rough and that the harbor has potential,” he told the audience.
The tribe’s “Salish Village” concept for the 75 acres owned by Rayonier Properties LLC would see the site transformed into a “living community” of commercial, light industrial, residential, cultural, lodging, retail, convention and park uses nestled between a restored waterfront pier and upland wildlife habitat and urban farmland, Allen and architects with Gentry Architecture Collaborative in Port Angeles said.
Gentry Architecture Collaborative designed the Jamestown S’Klallam’s Longhouse Market and Deli, community center and firehouse, all along U.S. Highway 101 in Blyn, as well as the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s heritage center on First and Peabody streets in Port Angeles.
Allen said it was not the tribe’s intent to take command of the Rayonier site, which has been a cleanup site since 2000, with the state Department of Ecology working with Rayonier and the Lower Elwha.
Instead, he said, Jamestown S’Klallam the tribe would “be a player.”
“Some want to see it go back to nature,” he said. “Some want it to be heavily developed. Some want it to be somewhere in between.”
The tribe also has agreed to pay for a Clallam County sheriff’s deputy and squad car for the Blyn area.
“We are looking at one more [deputy] to be dedicated to the east end,” he said.
He said the tribe’s extensive Christmas lights displayed throughout the Blyn village is part of “giving back.”
“We’re making a difference and contributing to the development and welfare of the community,” he said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.