Despite offer to bar casino, no land pact

Stodola, county’s Hyde say ball in Quapaw chief’s court

More than a month after the chairman of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma said he would sign an agreement with Arkansas officials prohibiting the tribe from building a casino on its Pulaski County property, Arkansas officials and Quapaw Tribe leaders have not discussed signing anything.

Chairman John Berrey declined to speak directly with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette but said through tribe spokesman Sean Harrison that he intended to meet with local officials "very soon."

The tribe bought 160 acres in Pulaski County east of Little Rock in two 80-acre purchases in 2013 and 2014 for $1.4 million to preserve tribal artifacts and graves discovered at the site. Graves of slaves from the former Thibault plantation have also been found there.

The tribe has applied with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to have the land placed into federal trust, which would remove it from most state and local legal jurisdiction. Such a move is common for tribes, Berrey has said, and is done to prevent alienation, which is the ability of a property or property rights to be sold or transferred.

Local officials have speculated that the tribe intends to build a casino on the property, ever since Berrey first said in 2014 that he would not rule out any future uses of the property. Berrey has insisted that the tribe has no plans to build a casino on the property.

Both Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde and Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said they didn't think it was their responsibility to reach out to Berrey after Berrey made his offer in a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, although both of their doors are "open."

"Because there was no follow-up, I assumed that it wasn't a serious offer," Hyde said.

But Hyde said he would withdraw his opposition to the tribe's trust application if such an agreement were signed between the county and tribe.

"I'm not aware of something else that we would be worried about or not worried about," Hyde said. "This has been -- ever since the start -- about a casino."

For Stodola to remove his opposition, he said Berrey would have to agree to keep the land under the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, like it is now. That would make the land subject to city planning and zoning ordinances and commissions that could approve or deny development projects on the property.

Ideally, Stodola said, the Little Rock Port Authority would acquire the land from the tribe, set aside the tribal and slave burial grounds, and make the rest available for industrial use that would benefit the city port.

"That's certainly something that I think would be a move in the right direction," he said.

Industrial port expansion was part of the 0.5 percent city sales tax passed in 2011. The port is shaped like a curve with the top lying against the banks of the Arkansas River. The Quapaw land lies on the inner edge of the curve, along with other land the city does not own and some land the city owns but hasn't developed.

Currently, the tribe uses much of the land for growing crops. This year, the tribe grew purple hull peas and okra, then donated the crops to the Arkansas Food Bank in Little Rock.

But Stodola said the agricultural use was still not in line with what he considers to be "the highest and best use of that property" -- industrial.

Stodola said he would be willing to work with Berrey and tribal officials but that his stipulation of remaining in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction was the requirement for him.

"It's their effort," he said. "They're going to have to agree with that. [This] can't be done unilaterally."

Gov. Asa Hutchinson also wrote a letter opposing the tribe's trust application.

Spokesman J.R. Davis said "there's no new news" from the governor's office since Berrey's offer in July.

Metro on 08/31/2015

Upcoming Events