Catawba Nation Buys Two Kings Land and Builds Alone

In February 2024 the Catawba Nation bought the parking lot and surrounding land at Two Kings Casino from Sky Boat Gaming. The Greenville, South Carolina, firm had helped open the Kings Mountain hall, about 35 miles west of Charlotte.

The tribe already ran the games. The asphalt and leftover acres were the last pieces a solo resort required, and federal regulators had already told both sides the old development deal could not stand.

The Parking Lot Harris Wanted Outright

Catawba Nation Chief Brian Harris spent his first months in office arguing over pavement. Kings Mountain Land Development Partners, an entity tied to Sky Boat principal Wallace Cheves, held the lot beside the modular hall and had floated a lease of $6 million a year. Harris said the Nation had already put about $5.5 million into clearing, grading, paving, striping, and lighting that ground, and he wanted the deed.

We want the parking lot. We want it outright. We cleared it. We graded it. We paved it, put all the parking stripes there, all the security lights.

Brian Harris, Catawba Nation chief, October 2023

Sky Boat’s attorney said at the time that the National Indian Gaming Commission had not allowed the tribe to buy the lot. Harris called the broader exit price “exorbitant” and said Sky Boat was holding the resort hostage, including the economic benefits the compact with North Carolina was supposed to send to Cleveland County. The February closing ended that standoff on the ground even before the last paper on Sky Boat’s casino interest was done.

When the sale was announced, Harris thanked Sky Boat for helping launch the hall and said the Nation was taking “full ownership and control of our destiny.” The games had been Catawba games since opening day. Destiny, in this case, meant the dirt a hotel tower has to sit on.

Federal Regulators Called Sky Boat a Manager

The lot fight was a symptom. On July 6, 2020, the Nation and Kings Mountain Sky Boat Partners, LLC signed a development agreement, a developer security agreement, a ground lease, and equipment leases. Delaware North Companies Gaming & Entertainment, Inc. signed a development-phase note the next month. In a May 10, 2021 letter, NIGC General Counsel Michael Hoenig referred the Sky Boat ground lease for review by the compliance division, asking whether those papers were a management contract and whether they left the tribe with the sole proprietary interest IGRA requires.

On December 7, 2022, NIGC Chairman E. Sequoyah Simermeyer issued a notice of violation against the Nation, Sky Boat, and related parties. Civil penalties could run as high as $57,527 per day for each violation, and the hall could have been ordered closed. The finding was not about slot mix or a sportsbook kiosk. It was about who held the keys.

THE NIGC’S SKY BOAT FINDINGS

• Unapproved manager: The Nation allowed Sky Boat to manage in part the expansion of Two Kings without an approved management contract.
• Late filing: The Nation and Sky Boat failed to submit a management contract within 60 days of execution, as NIGC rules require.
• Ground-lease power: The lease granted Sky Boat management authority over an operation that is supposed to benefit the tribe, then about 3,000 members, not a commercial partner.
• Turn-key structure: The papers contemplated Sky Boat developing, financing, and constructing facilities on a turn-key lease basis for the Nation.

Simermeyer put the legal test in one sentence, and it is the sentence that made a parking-lot deed a federal problem.

Based on an exhaustive investigation and analysis of the circumstances, we issued a Notice of Violation to both enforce regulatory compliance and ensure the Nation is the primary beneficiary of its gaming revenue.

E. Sequoyah Simermeyer, Chairman, National Indian Gaming Commission, December 2022 notice of violation

A settlement the commission had certified would have sent Sky Boat $125 million to walk away. Harris, sworn in during 2023, said that number was too high and that Sky Boat had not shown how it was built. The February land closing and a May 2024 settlement that removed Sky Boat from any remaining interest in the project were how that fight ended. The May terms were not disclosed.

9.4 Acres for $40 Million

Gaming sits on trust land. Hotels, garages, and overflow lots often sit on fee land the tribe actually owns. Two Kings needed both, and the trust piece was never big enough to hold a destination resort by itself.

TWO KINGS LAND AND THE RING AROUND IT

The ring parcel is 3.5 acres of paved parking and about 5.9 acres still undeveloped. The closing price attached to that deal is $40 million. Add that ring to the 16.57-acre Kings Mountain trust parcel and the Nation finally controlled the pad a garage and a tower require, without a landlord who also wanted to run the floor.

Cheves, a Greenville developer, had been the person who helped assemble the original site and push it through Interior. Buying him out of the lot did not buy every acre he still held around Kings Mountain. It bought the piece the modular casino already used and the dirt next to it. That was the choke point Harris had named out loud.

Why Two Kings Is in North Carolina

The Catawba Nation is based in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It could not put this hall there. The 1993 settlement that restored federal recognition tied the tribe to South Carolina gambling law, and the state later shut down the games that might have paid for a home-state casino. Kings Mountain sits just across the line, on land the tribe has long treated as aboriginal territory and as part of its congressionally drawn service area.

Interior denied a trust request in 2018. On March 12, 2020, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney reversed course and accepted the Kings Mountain tract under the Indian Reorganization Act, also finding the site met IGRA’s restored-lands test. The Bureau of Indian Affairs described that March 2020 decision to take land into trust as one of two historic acquisitions that week. Then-Chief William Harris said the Nation had gone from recognition to termination to restoration, and that the trust decision protected its economic rights.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which already ran North Carolina’s tribal casinos in the west, sued to stop the transfer. A federal judge rejected that challenge in April 2021. Congress later folded the Catawba Indian Nation Lands Act into the National Defense Authorization Act, which President Biden signed in November 2021. Senate testimony on the Catawba Lands Act had argued that North Carolina trust land was the point of the 1993 service area, not a loophole around South Carolina’s gambling ban.

In January 2021 the Nation signed a tribal-state compact with North Carolina that Interior later approved, allowing Class III play and a state share of revenue. Two Kings opened on July 1, 2021, in 29 modular trailers, about 29,000 square feet in all and about 14,700 square feet of gaming, with 500 slot machines and roughly 650 parking spaces at 538 Kings Mountain Boulevard, Interstate 85 Exit 5. By December the floor had 1,000 machines. The “temporary” building then sat there for years while the management fight ate the calendar.

Delaware North Took Over the Build

Sky Boat’s exit did not leave the Nation without a builder. Buffalo-based Delaware North had been on the project since 2019 as a consultant. After the land closed and the May settlement cleared the old partner, Delaware North stayed as consultant on gaming and hospitality and as developer. Yates-Metcon is general contractor. Square One Consultants is the owner’s representative. SOSHNY Architects drew the box. Trent Troxel, vice president of the Catawba Nation Gaming Authority, is the on-site tribal lead, working with Harris and the executive committee.

Ground broke in June 2024, four months after the lot changed hands. On October 27, 2025, crews set the final beam on the casino structure. That sequence is the second-order fact the February deed was for: a tribe that owns its ring land can sign a construction loan, pour a garage, and move machines without asking a developer-landlord for permission.

1,350 Slots on the Ground Floor

On May 20, 2026, the Nation and Delaware North opened the first phase of the $1.25 billion casino, an introductory floor on the ground level of the new complex. Doors opened at 10 a.m. Crews had moved about 600 slot machines out of the trailers and installed about 750 new ones, plus 22 new live tables. The old prefab row, with its food-truck patio, was no longer the product.

THREE VERSIONS OF THE SAME SITE

The introductory floor also has a 68-seat restaurant, an 18-seat bar, a high-limit room, sports-betting kiosks, and a player-rewards desk. The finished resort, as Delaware North lists it, adds 11 dining outlets, 11 bars, a players lounge, and that 385-room tower. The project cost in the company’s May 26, 2026 release is $1.25 billion, the only figure that now describes the build.

On July 1, 2026, five years to the day after the trailers opened, Harris cut a ribbon for tribal members and said opponents had underestimated the Catawba people. He told the crowd that when they looked at the building some people saw slot machines and he saw jobs and families with homes. The floor they were standing on was the first phase, not the last.

Spring 2027, Then Two More Sites

The hotel is not open. The upper casino floor is not open. Delaware North’s target for the rest of the complex is spring 2027, with the tower about a month behind the main floor in some briefings. That date can move. What cannot move backward is the land position that made the pour possible.

THE PATH FROM TRUST LAND TO A RESORT BOX

1. March 12, 2020: Interior accepts 16.57 acres at Kings Mountain into trust for gaming and other purposes.
2. July 1, 2021: The temporary Two Kings hall opens with 500 slot machines in modular buildings.
3. December 7, 2022: The NIGC issues a notice of violation over Sky Boat’s unapproved management role.
4. February 2024: The Nation buys the parking lot and surrounding land from Sky Boat.
5. May 2024: A private settlement removes Sky Boat from remaining project interest.
6. June 2024: Ground breaks on the permanent complex.
7. October 27, 2025: Crews place the final beam on the casino structure.
8. May 20, 2026: The introductory floor opens with 1,350 slots and live tables.
9. July 1, 2026: Harris marks five years on site and says two more North Carolina casinos are planned, locations undisclosed.
10. Spring 2027: Projected opening of the main casino and hotel tower.

The two additional sites Harris named in July are the next fight, if they are real enough to draw maps. The Eastern Band still holds the mountains. Catawba now holds an Interstate 85 off-ramp west of Charlotte. One parking-lot deed does not settle that map. It only made this exit usable.

Yates-Metcon, the general contractor, posted aerial video on September 8, 2026, of work still moving on the Kings Mountain box.

Take a bird’s-eye view of the latest progress at the Catawba Two Kings Casino! 🎥

We’re proud of the collaboration and craftsmanship bringing this remarkable project to life.#CatawbaTwoKingsCasino #ConstructionProgress #KingsMountainNC pic.twitter.com/d20eCZoE5h

— Metcon Inc. (@MetconConstruct) September 8, 2026

The lot Harris said he wanted outright is now the podium under that crane. Spring 2027 will tell whether the rest of the tower catches the floor that already took the machines out of the trailers.