Wichita ? An Indian tribe that wanted to build a casino in suburban Wichita is looking for other locations as Sedgwick County commissioners continue to put off a referendum on the project.

“For the foreseeable future, there won’t be a project in this area,” former Wichita Mayor Bob Knight, who has been representing the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska in a $270 million resort casino venture, said after meeting with the commission Wednesday.

In January, Knight and other supporters unveiled plans for the resort casino in Park City, just north of Wichita. The five commissioners initially supported a nonbinding referendum on it, but some changed their minds in August after a group of conservative state lawmakers voiced objections.

The advisory referendum was seen as crucial because efforts to approve casinos in Sedgwick County failed in the Legislature this year, in part because county voters had not voiced their approval.

After asking commissioners to reconsider a referendum on casinos, Knight said investors are looking at other counties, as well as the tribe’s reservation in northeast Kansas.

“The public is going to vote,” Knight told commissioners at Wednesday’s meeting. “Your choice is whether they will vote on an advisory referendum as a part of the upcoming public decisions about casinos in Kansas, or do they vote with their feet when they leave Sedgwick County to travel to other counties in Kansas?”

Only two of the commissioners responded to Knight’s plea, and no action was taken.

Commissioner Tim Norton, who favored a referendum, said commissioners were caught between pro- and anti-gambling forces and stood to lose no matter what they decided.

“It is a conundrum of huge proportions,” Norton said.

Norton said the issue could be put on ballots in August or November of next year, even if that comes after the legislative session.

But Rep. Nile Dillmore, D-Wichita, said after Wednesday’s meeting that this is the year to press the issue in the Legislature, which will be looking for ways to increase education funding at the direction of the Kansas Supreme Court.

“This idea of being able to say there’s not a sense of urgency about this is likely to be something that folks are going to regret down the road,” Dillmore said. “I think this train’s going to leave.”

Park City Mayor Dee Stuart, who also attended the meeting, said afterward that she won’t pursue a planned petition drive for a referendum.

“It’s dead,” she said.

“I think,” she added, “the people of Sedgwick County are going to be angry when they go to the polls next time, and I think they’re going to remember that they weren’t allowed to vote, weren’t allowed to decide their own future.”