Published May 2003

Quil Ceda Village has blockbuster potential

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

The Consolidated Borough of Quil Ceda Village on the Tulalip Indian Reservation west of Marysville is a thriving municipal and corporate body of the Tulalip Tribes.The local village council and the Quil Ceda Village Business Park are the keys to building and sustaining the Tulalip culture and regional economy.

The 2,000-acre site northwest of Marysville has two miles of frontage along Interstate 5, with access from two major freeway interchanges, at 88th Street NE and 116th Street NE, serving the southern and northern boundaries of the village.

Within the village, the Quil Ceda Business Park is a 468-acre master-planned business park designed to support retail, office, light industrial, distribution and warehousing development.

The Tulalip Tribes provide development parcels in a variety of sizes and configurations, supported by a comprehensive system of roads, utilities and amenities.

While present attention is focused on the opening of the Tulalips’ $72 million casino, four times the size of its former casino near the Tulalip Inn, it is only part of the overall development of the village.

Last July, tribal leaders revealed details of their plans for Quil Ceda Village, plans that will make it a regional entertainment, retail, lodging, convention and tourism center in the Pacific Northwest.

The site is fortuitously located approximately halfway between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, sited in a county with 600,000 people — a population that is expected to grow to 1 million residents within the next 20 years — and located where there are no similar attractions.

When fully developed, more than 14 million visitors a year are expected to be attracted to the village’s facilities, which will include:

• The $72 million, 227,000-square-foot casino, the largest in Washington state, featuring 2,000 video “slot” machines, 49 gaming tables, four restaurants and parking for more than 5,000 vehicles.
• The newly built Tulalip Bingo hall, at the southwest corner of the Quil Ceda Village site.
• The present Wal-Mart and Home Depot stores, Morning Star Espresso, the Mira Star gas station and a neighborhood shopping center — Quil Ceda Place — with a UPS Store, Jorgenson Golf, Educational Community Credit Union, Wayne Homes, Jackpot Teriyaki, Cellular Town of Tulalip, Port of Subs, Quil Ceda Village Council & Conference Center, Taco del Mar, Tulalip Liquor Store & Smoke Shop, Tulalip Nails and the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce.
• New stores are expected to include restaurants (Burger King, Red Robin, Taco Bell and Applebee’s); a KeyBank office, now under construction; a Bed, Bath & Beyond store; and others yet to be announced.
• At the north end of the village, there are plans for a 500,000-square-foot outlet mall on a 55-acre site, a development that has already found interest from such national retailers as Anne Klein, Banana Republic, Bass, Giorgio Armani, Nautica, Perry Ellis, Polo Ralph Lauren, Mikasa, Tom Hilfiger and Liz Claiborne.
• Once the casino opens, the Tulalip Tribes plan to move ahead with construction of an adjacent 500-room hotel, to be followed by a second hotel and a convention center with facilities for 3,000 or more people for local, regional and national conferences, trade shows and banquets.
• In the tribes’ later plans are visions of a 20-acre amusement park, a water sports park, possibly an RV park, a 1,500-seat mini-amphitheater for entertainment performances and a 30,000-square-foot fun center that could feature everything from go-carts and miniature golf to arcades and other family entertainment.

The transformation of the long-empty Tulalip Tribes property along I-5, for decades only a 2-mile stretch of brush, grass and scattered trees, has also brought about the transformation of the Indians’ life on the reservation.

“Just a decade ago, we had an unemployment rate of 60-plus percent for tribal members, compared to 4 percent in the predominant society around us,” said John McCoy, director of Governmental Affairs for the tribes.

“Now, it’s in the teens, and the majority of those individuals are from the logging and fishing industries, so we try to attract businesses for those skills to reduce unemployment even more.”

The tribes’ economic developments also have made it possible for them to preserve much of their Native American culture and language at the same time tribal members are tapping into such new fields as the Internet and high-tech telecommunications systems.

Always close to the land and water that sustained their ancestors for thousands of years, the Tulalips are restoring streams, particularly Quil Ceda Creek, which flows through the business park.

Planned even before the business development, the tribes are developing a wetlands area of more than 60 acres for passive recreation activities and salmon habitat.

West of the present bingo hall site, at Quil Ceda Way and 27th Avenue W., the Tulalips will build the region’s first high-tech waste treatment plant, using a revolutionary membrane technology developed in Japan over the past decade by Kubota Industries.

McCoy said the Japanese technology uses large membranes to trap air in the system, allowing more communities of “bugs” to be concentrated for breaking down waste products.

The odorless system is so efficient that there is less sludge to dispose of and purer water released than with much larger systems that require more space and maintenance.

The Tulalips also have been creating their own K-12 Heritage School, working through the Marysville School District.

The tribes have had the Tulalip Elementary School for years, across the street from the Boys & Girls Club. Now, modules that opened last year provide space for grades six through 12.

“We felt if we could blend our culture into our students’ education, it would go a long way toward improving self-esteem and self-respect for Indian children,” said McCoy, who last fall became the first Tulalip Tribes member to become a state legislator when he won election in the 38th District.

The governing body of the Tulalip Tribes is still the tribal council, now chaired by Herman Williams Jr., who is also a Quil Ceda Village Councilman. But the newly formed Quil Ceda Village represents the tribes’ move to create their own municipality.

“We didn’t have to create Quil Ceda Village, but sometimes we have trouble getting authorities to understand our tribal government. ... So that’s why we formed the village,” McCoy said, “to give people a structure they all understand, with a village general manager and three council members”

Present members include Stan Jones Sr. and Herman Williams Jr. A third position will be filled soon. John McCoy fills the role of the first Quil Ceda Village general manager.

To help more tribal members find work, the Tulalips have created a Technology Leap program, working with Everett Community College and the University of Washington to train their people in the latest technologies. Also, the tribes have purchased computers for their members.

“Eventually, we will be installing a double-ring fiber-optic broadband network on the reservation and providing our own telephone, Internet and television services, the whole works. How long it will take to get there I don’t know because that kind of infrastructure costs a lot of money. But it’s a worthwhile goal,” McCoy said. “All this is what we’re heading for — total self-sufficiency and self-government.”

But their efforts toward self-sufficiency are also helping neighboring communities. A share of the casino revenues is distributed each year by the Tulalips to local charitable groups, schools and government agencies, including police and fire departments.

An agreement with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department has resulted in the tribes assuming responsibility for their own full-time police protection, ending its contract with the county and returning six badly needed sheriff’s deputies to the county’s police force.

The tribes still contract with the city of Marysville for fire and emergency medical services throughout the reservation and Quil Ceda Village, but that expense is paid for totally by the Tulalips.

One of the largest expenses for the Tulalips is the development of roads, water and sewer systems on the reservation. The costly infrastructure is used not only by the 2,000 tribal members but also by 8,000 non-Indian residents of the reservation, the general public and visitors to Quil Ceda Village.

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