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A Berkeley developer’s plans for a $700 million luxury casino resort at the foot of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge will move another step closer to realization Thursday night. 

The Point Molate casino proposal, the brainchild of environmental clean-up expert-turned-gambling entrepreneur James D. Levine, will be the subject of a federal hearing starting at 7 p.m. in Richmond Memorial Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza. 

Conducted by officials of the Sacramento office of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the meeting will feature comments from anyone who signs up to speak on the proposal. 

Levine’s plan is one of two surviving Las Vegas-scale slot-machine and table game resorts proposals still flourishing in the Richmond area. 

A third proposal, calling for a 2,500-slot-machine gaming palace at the Casino San Pablo card room, was withdrawn last week in the face of federal hearings and strong opposition in the state Legislature. 

The withdrawal by the Lytton Rancheria Pomos isn’t a concession of defeat, and the tribe could revive its proposal later. 

For his proposal, Levine has teamed with the Guidiville Rancheria Band of Pomo tribespeople, gambling giant Harrah’s Entertainment, former Defense Secretary William Cohen and Loew’s Entertainment to present plans for a massive four-hotel resort with a major showroom at the site of the former Point Molate U.S. Navy fueling station. 

Thursday night’s hearing is an environmental scoping session to gather the widest possible range of written and verbal comments to be used in preparing an environmental impact statement on the proposal. 

Before a casino can be built at Point Molate, the Bureau of Indian Affairs would have to first agree to take the land into trust for the tribe. 

The financially strapped Richmond City Council has been the project’s biggest backer, looking for new jobs for its residents, a major stimulus to ailing businesses and millions in payments from the tribe. 

If approved, the resort would feature a massive casino installed in the landmarked Winehaven building, featuring 2,500 to 3,000 slot machines and 125 to 160 table games. 

In addition to running the casino, Harrah’s would operate its own 350-400 room hotel at the site, with Loew’s running the remainder of Point Molate’s 1,100 rooms. 

The other Richmond proposal comes from Noram Richmond LLC, a special purpose corporation formed by a Florida firm to team with the Scott’s Valley Pomo band to purchase a 30-acre site between Parr Boulevard and Richmond Parkway in North Richmond, where they have planned the Sugar Bowl Casino, a 225,000-square-foot, 1,940-slot Las Vegas-style gambling palace. 

That proposal is much further along in the regulatory process. The BIA scoping session on Sugar Bowl was held last summer. 

Two lawsuits dog the Point Molate proposal. The first, filed by environmental groups, challenges the city’s sale of the property. 

The second, filed by the same Florida developer behind the Sugar Bowl proposal, charges that the Point Molate developers improperly enticed the Guidivilles to breach a contract with Noram that predated the firms involvement with the Scott’s Valley Pomo tribe.