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River Rock Casino resort set to begin building in June

SANTA ROSA, May 20, 2008 – Construction on the $300 million luxury resort addition to River Rock Casino and another $100 million in infrastructure improvements in Sonoma County's Alexander Valley are set to start next month, an official with the Indian tribe that owns the casino said during a presentation at the BUSINESS JOURNAL’S 2008 construction conference in Santa Rosa this morning.

"The tribe is securing financing so construction can start next month," River Rock’s Director of Project Development Eugene Dvorak told the audience of more than 300 people at the JOURNAL's 2008 Building the North Bay Conference at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel.

The tribe said previously it has hired Merrill Lynch to help raise about $600 million from private and institutional investors as well as banks.

The Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians plans to replace the existing tent casino and restaurant housing River Rock Casino with a Tuscan-style luxury casino resort with hundreds of rooms, five restaurants, wedding chapel, spa, terrace event areas and meeting rooms in two phases.

The first phase, slated to open in 2011, would have 257 hotel rooms, the restaurants, spa, terraces, chapel and new access roads. It will be built where the existing parking lot is to allow the casino to stay open during construction.

Seven hundred underground spaces eventually will augment the 1,500 spaces in the existing concrete parking structures, but a parking lot will occupy the area where the current casino is and the second phase with more hotels rooms will be built. The second phase would be built based on demand, according to Mr. Dvorak

Part of the $100 million in infrastructure work going into the early part of the project is a new entry road, an emergency-access road from Highway 128, a new wastewater treatment facility and major improvements to Highway 128, which connects the casino to Highway 101 through the small community of Geyserville. The existing casino entry road will become the exit.

The resort will also be built to standards required by the U.S. Green Building Council for certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system for projects. The new wastewater plant, which discharges to a Russian River tributary on the 75-acre property under a federal permit, will supply highly treated wastewater for irrigation and toilets.

The tribe is in talks with Caltrans on adding a traffic signal plus turning and acceleration lanes at the entrance to the casino from Highway 128 and is looking into straightening some of the sharp curves between the planned resort and Geyserville.

Redwood City-based general contractor Rudolph & Sletten, which is building the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, has signed a letter of intent with the tribe for the project and is beginning the process of qualifying subcontractors for the River Rock resort, project manager Robert Stokes said at the conference. The Dry Creek Construction Co., which employs workers from the 974-member tribe, will be one of the subcontractors.

Rudolph & Sletten has labor agreements with several trade unions.

The first phase of the new casino resort is set to employ roughly 1,000, rising to as high as 2,000 when the second phase is built, according to Mr. Dvorak.