Features

Casino proposed for Yuba racetrack
complex would create 2,000 jobs

Staff
Friday July 05, 2002

YUBA CITY — Resort developers have joined an American Indian tribal group to announce plans to develop a casino-hotel on a site that Yuba County officials had hoped would host a racetrack. 

Officials at Chicago-based Forsythe Racing Inc. say they are still committed to developing the racetrack. On Tuesday, however, they also announced plans for an approximately $90 million casino resort to be built in partnership with a 500-member Oroville tribal group known as the Estom Yumeka Maidu Tribe. 

The casino proposal got a cool reception from Yuba County supervisors, who wanted to see a racetrack on the site five miles south of Marysville. They hoped the racetrack would generate an estimated $120 million a year with fans packing into a 45,000-seat grandstand to watch Indy-style events. 

But the $100 million racetrack venture, which was supported by 86 percent of local voters, never got off the ground. 

Tribal representatives said the casino-hotel project would create as many as 2,000 jobs and infuse the local economy with millions of dollars. 

A Yuba County supervisors committee is studying the new plans.