A spokesman for the Oklahoma-based Shawnee tribe said Tuesday that there were no plans to build a casino on the site of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition plant.

“I know that’s the bugaboo in everybody’s mind on this deal, but, really, there’s been no discussion of that in regards to Sunflower whatsoever,” said Greg Pitcher, head of the Shawnee tribe’s development corporation.

The Shawnee tribe filed a lawsuit June 13 in Washington, D.C., claiming it was entitled to the 9,065-acre site near DeSoto.

Pitcher met Tuesday with more than a dozen state and county officials at the Johnson County Administration Building in Olathe.

The closed-door, two-hour meeting is part of an out-of-court effort to resolve issues raised in the lawsuit.

“We’re looking for common ground,” Pitcher said.

Pitcher said tribal officials planned to spend the next few weeks reviewing land-use proposals submitted by Kansas University, Kansas State University and the Johnson County Parks and Recreation District.

“As far as we’re concerned, we developed good rapport today with KU, K-State and the Johnson County parks people,” Pitcher said.

KU’s proposals involve setting aside some of the acreage for ecological research and some for development of a high-tech research facility.

Pitcher said he remained unclear on what Kessinger/Hunter & Co., a Kansas City real estate development firm, wanted to do with the property.

“They were at the meeting, but they didn’t say anything,” he said. “They said they were just there to listen.”

Last month, Kessinger/Hunter announced it was interested in converting the onetime ammunition plant to a mix of residential and commercial properties in keeping with plans already endorsed by Johnson County.

Blaine Hastings, project manager with the General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of disposing of the property, said the group planned to meet again.

“There will be another meeting in the not too distant future to see what can be done to resolve the issues spelled out in the lawsuit before going to court,” Hastings said.

In the lawsuit, the Shawnee tribe argued that treaties signed in 1825, 1831 and 1854 said that if the federal government chose to dispose of the Sunflower site, the tribe had the authority to take it back.

As long as the lawsuit is pending, Hastings said, transferring the property to another entity would be legally impractical.

The possibility of the tribe eventually putting a casino on the site is not among the issues raised in the lawsuit, Pitcher said.

“There have been people who’ve asked us to agree upfront not to go with a casino, but we’re not going to do that because that’s not what this is about,” Pitcher said. “That’s asking us to give up our rights before the issues behind those rights have been resolved. It’s not germane.”