Santa Ysabel Resort & Casino was an Indian owned and operated

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

located on the Santa Ysabel Indian Reservation in

Santa Ysabel, California Santa Ysabel (Spanish for "St. Elizabeth"; Kumeyaay: ''Ellykwanan''), is an unincorporated community in the Santa Ysabel Valley of eastern San Diego County, in southern California. History The 1818 Santa Ysabel Asistencia is located here, a Spa ...

. It was owned and operated by Santa Ysabel Band of Diegueño Indians. The casino had 349

slot machines A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively as ...

and six gaming tables as well as live

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

and live

blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...

. It is also in close proximity to

Lake Henshaw Lake Henshaw is a reservoir in San Diego County, California at the southeast base of Palomar Mountain, approximately northeast of San Diego, California and southeast of Los Angeles. The lake covers approximately and holds of water when full ...

, Julian and Warner Springs. The Santa Ysabel tribal Chairman is Virgil Perez. Although it was called "Santa Ysabel Resort & Casino," there was no established

resort A resort (North American English) is a self-contained commercial establishment that tries to provide most of a vacationer's wants, such as food, drink, swimming, lodging, sports, entertainment, and shopping, on the premises. The term ''resort ...

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

History

The casino opened its doors on April 11, 2007 with the intention of incorporating a resort into the complex, but plans to do so were scrapped due to funding difficulties shortly after its construction. On April 20, 2011, an unemployed citizen from the town of Ramona, CA scooped a jackpot total of $1,036,253. The penny machine used to win the jackpot was a Gold Series progressive machine owned by Rocket Gaming, which has 1,100 similar games throughout the United States. This was the first one in California. On July 2, 2012 the casino filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy following massive losses and a lawsuit for unpaid fees issued by San Diego County for $3,000,000. Total debts were believed to have exceeded $50,000,000 according to UT San Diego. On September 4, 2012 - A Judge presiding at the Southern District of California Bankruptcy court ruled the casino as ineligible to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy as a federally recognized tribe and that the casino was not an unincorporated company, leaving the future of the Santa Ysabel business, its creditors and its 120 employees in uncertainty. On February 3, 2014, the Casino closed down after eventually going out of business, resulting in the loss of 115 staff jobs. As to what will become of the building itself is currently to be confirmed. The casino was also a funding source for the reservation's fire department. Solar Developer and Tribal Enterprise company Bio Star Solar are tipped to head up the next project concerning the Highway 79 site location in question, of which exact plans remain unseen at this time. Tribal Chairman Virgil Perez said he remained committed to exploring other business ventures, including gaming on a limited scale, to provide employment opportunities to the former casino workers.

Restaurants

*''The Orchard'' *''7 Oaks Bar & Lounge''

References

External links

Official website
{{coord, 33.179729, -116.69137, display=title Casinos completed in 2007 Casinos in San Diego County, California Native American casinos 2007 establishments in California 2014 disestablishments in California Defunct casinos in the United States Native American history of California