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A proposed $273 million Catawba Indian casino that would bring Vegas-style gambling close to Charlotte faces a new legal challenge from a rival tribe.

• Project plans include a casino, a hotel and restaurants, Harris said Friday during a press conference in Kings Mountain. The complex will cost about $273 million, according to The Charlotte Observer.
• The proposed 195,000-square-foot facility would include 75,128 square feet of gaming, including 1,800 electronic gaming machines and 54 table games. The development would also include a 940-seat.

The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians claimed this week in federal court that political pressure from the project’s developer prompted the government to pave the way for the casino and bypass Congress in the process.

Welcome to Harrah's Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel! Visit our newly opened casino located just outside the town of Murphy, NC which is approximately two hours away from Knoxville, Chattanooga and downtown Atlanta. The Catawba Indians have won federal approval to open a $273 million casino complex in Cleveland County, a move that would bring Vegas-style gambling within 35 miles of Charlotte.

In an amended complaint, the Cherokees claim that developer Wallace Cheves, a major political donor, “leveraged his political connections to pressure the (Interior) Department.” Over the past 18 months Cheves has given nearly $500,000 to President Trump, the Republican Party, U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Lindsey Graham and other GOP lawmakers, according to the Federal Election Commission.

In March the U.S. Interior department agreed to put 16 acres near Interstate 85 in Kings Mountain in trust, a designation that would give the South Carolina-based Catawba tribe the right to develop a casino and resort.

But the Cherokees, who operate two casinos in western North Carolina, sued that same month. In the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, they said the government “faced enormous political pressure” to take the action.

The proposed casino, which would be 35 miles from Charlotte, has reignited a feud between the Carolinas’ biggest tribes over centuries-old land claims and big money. At stake is a piece of the $32 billion Indian gaming industry.

Tribes dispute claims

The Catawbas appeared to have come out on top when the government green-lighted the Kings Mountain casino this spring. The Interior Department cited a study that showed a $273 million investment would generate an annual economic impact of $428 million for Cleveland County, with more than 2,600 new jobs and $5 million in new local tax revenue.

“It’s a righting of a wrong,” Catawba Chief William Harris told reporters at the time. “We have now regained what once belonged to us.”

But Cherokee Principal Chief Richard Sneed argues that the law prevents the Catawbas from building a casino in North Carolina. He called the government action “an egregious violation of federal law.”

“Our amended complaint will establish for the court that there is no legitimate, legal basis for the decision,” he said in a statement this week. “Despite political contributions and questionable lobbying campaigns conducted by Mr. Cheves, the facts and the law are clearly on (our) side.”

Cheves could not be reached Thursday despite multiple calls and emails.

The Catawbas won the opening round of the legal fight in April when a federal judge denied the Cherokees’ motion for a preliminary injunction. He found that the Cherokees had not suffered “irreparable harm” by the government’s approval of the Catawba casino.

Cherokee argument

The Catawbas’ home is a 700-acre reservation in York and Lancaster counties in South Carolina. In a 1993 law, the so-called Settlement Act, they agreed to drop claims to surrounding land in exchange for $50 million and federal recognition. South Carolina drew the line at gambling, which is illegal in the state.

The Catawbas say it’s a provision of the 1993 agreement that gives them the right to own a casino in Cleveland County. That provision gave the tribe a “service area” in six N.C. counties, including Mecklenburg and Cleveland. Tribe members who live in those counties are eligible for the same federal benefits and services as those living on the reservation.

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But the Cherokees argue that federal laws — the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and the 1993 Settlement Act — prohibit the Catawbas from opening an N.C. casino. They say only Congress can change that.

In March 2019 Graham introduced a bill in the Senate that would do that. Tillis and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, both N.C. Republicans, co-sponsored the bill. The Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing two months later but the bill never came up for a Senate vote.

“(A)fter Congress chose to leave the (federal laws) unchanged, Cheves leveraged his political connections to pressure the Department to proceed without the legislation it had previously recognized was necessary,” the Cherokees said in their amended complaint.

They go on to claim that a Catawba casino will fail to protect “the Cherokee cultural resources and patrimony that likely exist” in Cleveland County. They say it also would “undermine the success that the (Cherokees have) spent decades building, diverting largely into the hands of a non-Indian developer the gaming revenues . . . on which the EBCI and its members depend.”

Interior department spokesman Conner Swanson defended the government’s decision that gave the Catawbas the rights to the land.

“This decision empowers the Catawba Indian Nation to pursue economic development opportunities for the benefit of its members and community,” he said in a statement Thursday. “The decision to accept the King Mountain Site in trust was reached after an extensive review process as established under law, and the Department stands behind its decision.”

Political connections

When the Catawbas first sought to open a Kings Mountain casino in 2013, they met political headwinds.

Then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and then-Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper opposed it. Leading state senators, including GOP leader Phil Berger, asked federal officials to deny the request as a “dangerous precedent.” So did over 100 N.C. House members, including Tillis, then House speaker.

When the project was resurrected in 2019, a bipartisan group of 38 N.C. senators including Berger wrote to the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs committee. They called Graham’s Senate bill “a last-ditch effort to game the system.”

Cheves has been involved in both efforts.

A graduate of Wofford College, he spent his early career in the video poker business before moving into other gaming ventures, including riverboat gambling. In a 2014 Observer interview, he said he has broad gaming experience and had worked with other tribes.

Court records showed two of his companies paid large judgments. In 2007, one called First Class Games satisfied a $5 million judgment. In 2013 Adams Mill Associates, a real estate company, had a $1.3 million judgment entered against it, the Observer reported in 2014. “We live in a litigious society,” Cheves said at the time, adding that the two cases were settled.

Cheves, who now operates Sky Boat Gaming, was on Graham’s national finance committee when the S.C. senator ran for president in 2016. He has since donated more than $700,000 to candidates and political committees, according to the lawsuit.

Since the beginning of 2019, that’s included $171,200 to Trump, $160,000 to the Republican National Committee, $56,000 to Tillis committees and $45,900 to the National Republican Senate Committee, according to FEC records.

A Tillis spokesman said last year that the senator believed Graham’s bill simply clarified the federal government’s role.

The Cherokee lawsuit says Cheves used “his Executive Branch connections to bludgeon the (Interior) Department.”

Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop declined to comment on the lawsuit. He referred to Graham’s earlier comment that the department’s decision “righted a great wrong.”

“This is great news for Catawba Nation and people in these border areas who will see an increase in employment opportunities,” Graham had said. “I want to thank the Trump Administration for their work in making this happen and all of those who fought long and hard with the Catawba Nation to turn this dream into a reality.”

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