03:05 PM PDT on Monday, June 19, 2006

By kgw.com and KGW Staff

The petitioners of a proposed casino at the defunct Multnomah Kennel Club have decided to wait and place their measures before voters in the November 2008 election.

AP File

Lake Oswego entrepreneurs Bruce Studer and Matthew Rossman got the green light to collect signatures to create the state's first non-Indian casino Monday and put it before voters in the upcoming election.

But the timing of the approval left casino backers with roughly two weeks to gather up 175,000 valid signatures. No initiative campaign has ever gathered that many signatures in such a short time. Although they said they were confident in their ability to gather a large number of signatures quickly, they decided not to move forward this past weekend.

"We had a solid plan to gather the necessary signatures in a short time period," Roger Gray, the committee's consultant, said in a statement. "But, as the timeline moved, we were evaluating our alternatives day-to-day."

Studer and Rossman will refile the measures immediately to build the casino in Wood Village. The casino backers tried to begin gathering signatures several months ago. But the state attorney general's office twice forced them to rewrite their initiatives to pass constitutional muster.

One of the measures would amend the Oregon Constitution to allow one commercial casino. The other would site the casino at the greyhound track and direct that 25 percent of the gambling revenues go to the state.

"We have the right idea, at the right location and the benefits of this project for all Oregonians are just too great to walk away from," Studer said in a statement. "By moving to the 2008 election, we will have sufficient time and are confident we will succeed."