The Tohono O’odham Gaming Enterprise Board announced it will retain CEO Andy Asselin for another two years.
Since joining the enterprise in early 2013, Asselin successfully led it “through the construction and opening of a beautiful new facility in the (Phoenix area’s) West Valley,” the board said in a news release.
That casino, a $200 million temporary facility that is the first phase of a larger casino/hotel development, opened Dec. 20 at the edge of Glendale with bingo-style gaming machines, but without true slot machines, poker tables, blackjack tables or alcohol because the state hasn’t granted permission for those.
Still, the opening marked a turning point in the tribe’s ambitious effort to test the limits of gaming compacts that have governed tribal casinos in Arizona since the 1980s. The Tohono O’odham prevailed over other casino-operating tribes, as well as an array of municipal, state and federal entities and officials, which used courts and public forums to challenge the new casino.
Opponents contended that agreements reached by the state and tribes don’t allow the O’odham, whose reservation takes up a large portion of Pima County, to open a casino on land it purchased miles outside of its historical reservation boundaries.
The O’odham countered that federal law allowed it to replace flooded reservation land and the state agreements permitted the tribe to build a casino on the property.
Asselin has more than 30 years of experience in the gaming and resort industry. He has run multiple-location facilities, overseen the construction of new facilities and operated casinos in Michigan, California and Nevada.
The Tohono O’odham Nation is Southern Arizona’s 13th largest employer, with 4,350 full-time-equivalent employees at the start of 2015, the Arizona Daily Star’s annual Star 200 survey shows.
