A view of Main Street in Middleboro, Mass. The Mashpee Wampanoag Indians want to open a casino outside the downtown.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy Bill Murphy

MIDDLEBORO, Mass. — The rotary on the northwest edge of town spins cars through here on their way to Cape Cod, Boston, Plymouth or Providence.

The rotary is something of a landmark, sitting at the gateway to the Cape.

Travelers pause at this well-known way station, stopping at the gas station, the restaurants or the bait shop ringing the roundabout. Vacationers and truckers gather supplies and rest, climb back into their Suburbans or their Peterbilts and roll back down Routes 44 or 28 or 18, or hurtle forward on to Route 495.

The passersby slip through, rarely leaving a mark on this rural community, putting in their rearview mirrors Middleboro’s trim houses, dense woods and cranberry bogs.

Until this year, when the Mashpee Wampanoags came to town.

“We’re hoping that the Wampanoags are going to move into town and improve what we have here,” said Dan Lavine, as he stood outside the front door of his house on Center Street. “I’m hoping they’re going to move into town . . . and be proud of their town.”

On Feb. 15, the Bureau of Indian Affairs notified Cape Cod’s Mashpee Wampanoags that they had been granted federal recognition as a Native American tribe. The opportunity to make money off gambling came with the designation.

It’s an opportunity the tribe pursues with vigor through land deals and negotiations with the Town of Middleboro. The prospect of a casino here has implications not only for the town, but the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, gambling competitors throughout Southeastern New England and a sister tribe — the Wampanoags of Gay Head-Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard.

Along their 32-year journey to federal recognition, the Mashpee Wampanoags acquiesced to demands that they forgo building a casino in their home community of Mashpee, or use the courts to take private land. But any gambling facility the Wampanoags develop has to be on tribal land, or on property the Wampanoags buy near Mashpee.

Soon after gaining that long-sought recognition, the Wampanoags came up the road about 40 miles to Middleboro, looking for land.

With the help of a developer, the tribe last month paid Middleboro $1.8 million for about 125 acres. It now owns or has options on more than 350 acres in all in the town. The tribe is talking to a family trust that is shopping 202 acres abutting its other parcels, which are just off Route 495 and about 40 miles from Providence.

The tribe and its backers want to spend $1 billion to open a casino in Middleboro by 2010, with slot machines, table games, a 1,500-room hotel, golf courses and other attractions similar to the complexes in Connecticut run by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes and far larger than either Rhode Island’s Twin River or Newport Grand.

A large-scale casino built near Rhode Island’s border could devastate this state’s lucrative gambling industry. Rhode Island relies heavily on its 4,672 slot machines to balance its budget. The state expects $271.1 million in video-gambling revenue in the fiscal year that starts today.

Accustomed to living in a town seen by many on the way to some other place, Lavine and his neighbors now must consider what happens if Middleboro becomes a destination.

“When this casino goes up, it’s going to be there for good and ever,” said Jean Scarborough, president of the Cranberry County Chamber of Commerce, which is headquartered in Middleboro. “It’s going to change people’s lives forever.”

The revelation that the tribe had secured land here quickly split Middleboro’s populace into opposing factions — those who consider a casino a financial godsend and others who see it ushering in a nightmarish netherworld.

With signs on front lawns, shop windows and car bumpers, people take sides for or against a casino.

“I think the last time there was this much controversy was when the [commuter] train came,” said Kathy Ryan, a retired Middleboro teacher and one of the contributors to Casino-Friend.com.

Gary J. Russell, the town’s police chief, will have to keep a lid on things if it results in the latter.

Middleboro’s police station sits on North Main Street, in a 200-year-old clapboard building with white peeling paint. It once housed a general store.

Visitors walk down a cramped hallway that wends past a municipal office before ending at an anteroom where Russell’s secretary greets them.

Russell, a broad-shouldered man with thinning hair, sits at a desk to one side of a high-ceiling office.

He makes a point of noting the room’s previous use as a horse stall.

The police chief sounds frustrated about years of budget cuts that have reduced his department to 40 officers, about two-thirds the number he says he needs to cover the town’s 68 square miles.

At a Town Meeting that spanned three nights before concluding June 11, voters overwhelmingly rejected five proposed property-tax overrides, forcing cuts in the police and other municipal departments. Ryan, the casino proponent, is losing a part-time job at the town library.

“We’ve been cutting staffing for four years,” Russell said.

The town’s fiscal problems sparked a recall effort this spring against three selectmen that the casino deal’s announcement enflamed.

“This town is vulnerable because it’s in a financial pickle; the town is hurting,” said Eva T. Gaffney, chairwoman of the Chamber of Commerce. “It’s been on a poor economic trajectory for quite a long time.”

The tribe has offered the town $7 million a year for 10 years in exchange for supporting a casino here. The draft agreement includes a pledge by the tribe and its backers to plow $150 million in infrastructure improvements around the site.

The money could help the police chief hire as many as 20 more officers, he said, and house the department in a new police station he wants to see built.

He expects traffic to be the biggest problem a casino causes.

With an expanded staff, help from the Massachusetts State Police barracks in town and a tribal security department, he foresees little disruption to the town’s tranquil nature.

“God sent this casino to Middleboro,” Russell said.

God notwithstanding, the Wampanoags face numerous hurdles before they can build a casino.

The deal in which the town agreed to back the Wampanoags’ plans was the result of negotiations earlier this year between the tribe and Town Manager John F. Healey, who retired Saturday and Middleboro’s attorney, Jonathan D. Whitten.

Opposition rose up in town as soon as the agreement became public.

“It would be a very long difficult road to get a casino without [the town’s] approval,” said Greg Stevens, a member of an opposition group known as CasinoFacts.org. “We’re fighting for that right.”

Massachusetts law requires voters approve any agreement with the Wampanoags at a Town Meeting before Middleboro officials can finalize a deal with the tribe, the town’s Board of Selectmen learned Monday. The town of 20,373 has 13,000 registered voters. About 1,000 people showed up June 13 just to talk about the tribe’s proposal. Finding a place big enough to vote on a contract will be difficult, town officials said.

The tribe also must negotiate with the federal government to get land held for the tribe in trust and secure a federal gambling license. The tribe would then have to enter negotiations with Governor Patrick to set a formula for payments to the state.

Patrick recently formed a study group to consider adding slot machines at the state’s four racetracks or allowing casino gambling. The governor, who supported the tribe’s bid for federal recognition, is not expected to reach a decision until after the group has made its recommendations.

The owners of the Bay State’s two dog and two horse tracks have pushed to introduce slot machines or create full-blown casinos at their facilities, making many of the same arguments of casino supporters in Rhode Island: expanded gambling would make money for Massachusetts, create jobs and recapture some of the gambling money flowing elsewhere.

The Massachusetts racing facilities are: Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville, Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park in Raynham, Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere and Suffolk Downs in East Boston.

State legislation may be needed to permit casino gambling.

The Wampanoags of Gay Head-Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard, who also have federal recognition, are standing in line as well. The Aquinnah have said they’ll seek to open a casino if the Mashpee reach a deal to open one.

“What they get, we get. Our rights are clear, the same as Mashpee,” Donald Widdiss, Aquinnah Wampanoag chairman, told The Boston Globe last month.

Casino opponents in Middleboro are doing what they can to slow down the process.

They’ve asked Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to investigate the town’s sale of 125 acres to the tribe, contending that the transaction was improper because it included 20 acres the town did not own.

“No one expected there would be an agreement that fast,” said Robert M. Desrosiers, another casino opponent. “Most people in town don’t have a concept of how big this is or how close it is to downtown.”

In early June, Town Meeting appointed a seven-member casino fact-finding committee to research the project’s potential impact.

At a meeting last week, selectmen delayed a vote on the tribe’s financial offer and hired a lawyer, Dennis Whittlesey, of Washington, D.C., to rework the initial agreement with the tribe.

Selectman Adam Bond said he hoped the town could add a percentage of the casino profits to the $7-million annual payout.

Bond, a lawyer and New York City transplant, finds himself in the middle of a whirlwind of politics and paperwork.

Scattered amid the legal briefs and manila folders on his desk are four, medium-sized Honey Dew Donuts coffee cups and a pack of Marlboro Lights. Deep bags darken the skin under his eyes.

He escaped the recall effort and wonders aloud why other town officials agreed to back a casino before analyzing a venue’s potential effects.

“Why don’t these facts already exist?” he asked. “We already have an agreement.”

Now, he’s trying to maintain his focus as the acrimony rises among his neighbors.

“We have to prepare ourselves for the growth of a casino,” he said.

The town has to figure out how to accommodate hundreds of casino workers and their families — figure out where those people are going to live and what services they’re going to need. It’s got to figure out how to handle thousands of people visiting a casino open around the clock.

“There are going to be new faces, new tongues, new colors, that are going to show up,” he said. “The casino is going to impact this insular, closed, community,” Bond said. “We’re going to need to learn to do things differently.”

A piece of the casino revenue, guaranteed by the tribe, will help, he said.

“Once the money is in, what do you do with it?”

While Gary Russell, the police chief, is sure the town needs more police, others have suggested a scholarship fund or historic-preservation work. Bond wants to put money into a land-acquisition fund to control growth outside a casino property.

No amount of money will blunt a casino’s impact, said Desrosiers, who belongs to the opposition that’s coalesced around CasinoFacts.org

“If we lose the battle for the casino, we lose the town,” Desrosiers said.

Such talk frustrates Lavine, the Center Street man who supports the casino plan.

“People move down from the cities and want to keep it a sleepy little town,” Lavine said. “This town keeps pushing things away.”

pgrimald@projo.com