Green light for Gun Lake Casino 
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Feb. 5 denied a request to stop the U.S. Department of the Interior from taking into trust 147 acres for the proposed Gun Lake Casino in Wayland. The decision appears to remove the last obstacle to the $200 million project’s construction.

The 193,000 square foot Gun Lake Casino has been the dream of the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, also known as the Gun Lake Tribe for nearly ten years. It’s to be located at a site at US-131 and 129th Avenue, near Bradley, midway between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. The tribe is proposing initial construction of the gaming complex on the property of the former Ampro factory

In 2003 the tribe announced an agreement with Station Casinos of Las Vegas, Nevada, to develop and operate the casino. The facility is to house 2,500 slot machines, 75 gaming tables, an entertainment center, restaurants, and a buffet.

Construction is expected to take from 12 to 16 months. The tribe has declared union labor will be used during its construction. It has also said it will release details about the casino’s design and construction team at a later date.
-From Michigan Construction News.com

Jobless numbers: they’re not good
January was part of a long, cold economic winter for Michigan and the rest of the nation.

The federal government reported on Feb. 6 that U.S. employers laid off 598,000 workers last month – the most during a month since 1974 – and the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. The U.S. construction industry, the Associated General Contractors reported, has suffered job cuts totaling 747,000 during the last 12 months – representing more than a fifth of all workers who have lost jobs during the last year.

“Today’s report on job losses underscores the urgency of implementing a job-boosting economic stimulus package focused on infrastructure,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the AGC, commenting on the Feb. 6 Bureau of Labor statistics report. “Construction workers have suffered far more than their share of that pain.”

Simonson pointed out that the job destruction is no longer confined to homebuilding. “In the past 12 months,” he said. “nonresidential builders and specialty trade contractors, along with heavy and civil engineering construction firms, have had to lay off 309,000 workers, or nearly 7 percent of their workforce. Many of these workers would be re-employed within weeks if Congress passes a stimulus bill with at least $150 billion of construction spending.”

The Center for American Progress reported that the spike in unemployment in January brings the total number of people out of work to 11.6 million – 4.1 million more than a year ago. The unemployment rate has not risen this fast over a three-month period since the recession of the early 1980s, and there have only been two months since 1948 when there were more unemployed workers in the United States, both during the recession of the early 1980s.

“There are no indications that employers are going to hire workers anytime soon,” the Center said. “The temporary help industry, which provides a leading indication of demand for workers, lost 76,400 jobs in January and is down by 695,000 since its peak in December 2006.”

Michigan’s unemployment rate last month, 10.6 percent, led the nation and was the highest it’s been since December 1984.

The unemployed are finding it increasingly difficult to get back to work. The typical unemployed worker has been out of work and searching for a job for 10.3 weeks, and nearly one in four (22.4 percent) unemployed workers have been out of a job for at least six months. The problem is that there are many more job seekers than jobs to be had. There were 2.8 million job openings on the last business day of November (the latest data on job openings), but there were 10.5 million unemployed workers.