This artist's rendering shows one of several preliminary visions for the planned Ponca Fancy Dance Casino, a combined casino, hotel and events complex to be built in Chilocco, Okla., by Sunway-Postoak Advisory Inc., a company with a co-owner in Lawrence. Construction of the 0 million project is expected to begin late this spring and then be finished within 18 months.

A former coach and athletics director at Haskell Indian Nations University is entering the biggest financial game of his career.

Sunway-Postoak Advisory Inc., a company co-owned by Wayne Postoak of Lawrence, this week secured a contract to develop, design and build a $60 million casino and hotel complex in north-central Oklahoma, about 50 miles from Wichita.

The deal, with the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, is the first for Sunway-Postoak, a firm formed 18 months ago to build on the rising market for gaming on American Indian lands nationwide.

The firm already has agreed to take on similar projects for three other tribes in Oklahoma, Postoak said, although arrangements have yet to be finalized.

“I’m feeling pretty good about this,” said Postoak, himself a member of the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma.

Postoak has been a construction contractor since 1984 but only recently agreed to team up his company with one owned by Don Culbertson, which already has developed some 150 hotel properties, including a hotel in Las Vegas.

The combination gives Sunway-Postoak offices in Lawrence, Overland Park and Las Vegas enough combined experience to build on the rush to build and enhance gaming operations on American Indian property.

“At this point, only 12 percent of the over 400 casinos on Indian land have hotels,” Postoak said.

“The areas we’re starting in are from people we know well, starting in Oklahoma. Hopefully we’ll be able to do more.”

The Ponca project, of course, is more than a hotel.

The tribe has plans for Ponca Fancy Dance Casino, a complex featuring a 100-room hotel, a 50,000-square-foot casino and a 20,000-square-foot events center, one big enough to easily seat 400 for bingo or welcome theatrical acts or boxing matches.

“It’s a big deal,” said Scott Ambler, the project architect, based in Bartlesville, Okla. “There are very few in this part of Oklahoma that have a hotel and an events center with the casino. It’s not a standard slot house. It will be somewhere you can go and spend the night. It’s more like a resort than a casino.”

Postoak, who left Haskell in 1983 after 13 years as a basketball coach and athletics director, is looking forward to continuing contacts made on the road by working with a recognized leader in hotel and gaming development.

“I had given talks, when I was athletics director, to over 200 Indian tribes throughout the United States,” Postoak said. “It’s a natural fit for us.”