10.24.08City's latest years have been among its most notorious and divisive
By Mike Connell
...Sears joined the exodus to the suburbs, and in 1993, developer Mike Malik proposed turning the vacant Sears building on Michigan Avenue into a $60 million casino.
Malik, a native of Clay Township, envisioned a casino owned by Bay Mills, a Chippewa band from the Sault Ste. Marie area, and managed by Harrah's Casino Hotels of Nevada. The proposal failed on July 13, 1993, when city voters rejected it, 5,120 to 4,751.
A year later, voters in Port Huron Township rejected a similar proposal for a casino off the Water Street interchange of the expressway.
Malik reappeared in 2002, a year after voters endorsed a casino proposal from Don Reynolds, one of the Edison Inn's owners. In August 2002, Gov. John Engler agreed to let Bay Mills create a reservation on the Edison Inn's 15-acre site if the tribe would drop its long-standing claim to a 110-acre parcel at Charlotte Beach on the St. Mary's River.
Numerous efforts to win congressional and presidential approval of the Engler-Bay Mills' deal have failed. A new bill was introduced in May by U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee. As of last week, it remained in the House Natural Resources Committee... (Complete Article)
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