Rohnert Park officials are scrambling to prepare for a great unknown that has been years in arriving — what will happen when a 24-hour, 3,000-slot-machine casino opens on the west edge of the city?

‘We have no idea what the impacts will be,’ Vice Mayor Joe Callinan said Tuesday as the council reviewed the report of a city task force that is trying to answer that question.

After a decade of controversy, environmental studies, lawsuits and bureaucracy, the $800 million Graton Resort & Casino is expected to open Nov. 1.

Talks are under way about how three fire agencies should divide a one-time $1.5 million payment that the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria is giving to Sonoma County to address impacts from the casino being built outside Rohnert Park.

Rohnert Park and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria have agreed to a new revenue-sharing deal worth $40 million more than one they signed in 2003. The agreement is intended to more fully address the impacts of the casino the tribe is now building.

The future shape of gambling in Sonoma County gained greater detail Monday as Station Casinos released the first official drawings of the enormous Indian casino under construction outside Rohnert Park.

Rohnert Park may use its eminent domain powers to acquire parts of several properties needed to widen Wilfred Avenue to accommodate the huge Indian casino now under construction.

The city in September signed an agreement with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the county of Sonoma under which the tribe is to pay the full cost of widening the street.

But officials say neither they nor the tribe have been able to reach agreements with five property owners to buy just under an acre of land still needed for the $10 million widening project from Redwood Drive to Stony Point Road.

For immediate neighbors of the Indian casino being built on the edge of Rohnert Park, worries about the project’s impacts have been underlined by years of dread that it will drain their wells dry.

Five months after its tribal backers won final federal approval to move ahead, the largest casino resort in the Bay Area is starting to take shape on the northwest edge of Rohnert Park.

Opponents of the Indian casino being built next to Rohnert Park have sued the city over its recent agreement with the tribe to widen Wilfred Avenue. The suit filed Tuesday in Sonoma County Superior Court challenges the city’s conclusion that the project is exempt from state laws requiring environmental studies. Wilfred Avenue is the northern border of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria reservation and provides the main access to the casino resort.

Sonoma County supervisors Tuesday unanimously approved a multimillion-dollar revenue-sharing agreement with the tribe that is building a casino next to Rohnert Park. ‘What we have before us is certainly a really good outcome of negotiations for the county,’ said Supervisor David Rabbitt, whose 2nd District includes the 254-acre Wilfred Avenue casino site.

The tribe building a casino in Rohnert Park has agreed to pay at least $9 million annually to Sonoma County to offset the impacts of the project, plus up to $38 million more a year if its revenues hit projections.
The payments from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, some of which would start this year, are nearly four times what the county previously estimated it would get.
And they are separate from those laid out in a 2003 agreement between the tribe and Rohnert Park, under which the tribe is to pay the city about $200 million over 20 years.
‘Without a doubt, I think it’s the best agreement that’s ever happened between a tribe and a local government,’ said Shirlee Zane, chairwoman of the county Board of Supervisors. She lauded the tribe for its participation.