Editorial: Catawba Nation jumping back into the bingo industry

The Catawba Indian tribe hopes to resurrect its bingo operation at a new location in Rock Hill. We hope the project is a success.

The new high-stakes bingo hall is planned for the 45,000-square-foot building that once housed a Bi-Lo grocery store in Rock Hill’s Northeast Plaza Shopping Center at Cherry and Anderson roads. It would be a return to the bingo business for the Catawbas after an earlier local operation failed and efforts to establish bingo halls at other locations in the state didn’t pan out.

The Catawbas’ 1993 land settlement with the federal government included an agreement to allow the tribe to establish two bingo halls in South Carolina, one on the tribe’s original land, which covered parts of York, Chester and Lancaster counties, and another anywhere in the state that gives local approval. Soon after the settlement was signed, the tribe opened a bingo hall in the former Rock Hill Mall on Cherry Road.

For a while, the operation was a success, with buses bringing customers from throughout the region to play traditional bingo. But business gradually tapered off, and the tribe closed the hall in 2006.