Commissioners asked to reconsider Glendale casinos

Jeff Schweers

Thursday, March 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Clark County Commissioner Jay Bingham has asked fellow commissioners to reconsider their approval last week of two 300-room hotel-casinos in rural Glendale about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Bingham's request came after residents of the lower Moapa Valley inundated the commissioners with calls of protest over the 3-1 decision to allow the hotels and expand the gaming area.

Bingham said he had voted for approval of the project not because he believed it was right for the area but because nobody had spoken against it at a March 20 zoning hearing.

"I was shocked there was no opposition," Bingham said after putting in the request for the rehearing to let residents debate the merits of the project in public.

"If they want to have a say-so, we'll let them have a say-so," said Bingham, who represents the upper Moapa Valley. "In those small towns, that's what we do."

The board is set to decide April 17 whether to reconsider the project.

Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who represents the lower Moapa Valley, said he voted against the project in the first place because he thought more input was needed.

People "are basically concerned about putting what is normally seen as an urban-type facility in a rural area that could possibly generate changes in that rural lifestyle," Woodbury said.

While the project conformed to the master plan for the region, Woodbury said the applicants didn't convince him that expanding the gaming area would have no impact on the "surrounding community and the lifestyle of individuals in the area."

Charlie Hester, owner of the Glendale Motel, a service station and restaurant in Glendale, has plans to transform 151 acres on both sides of Interstate 15 east of the Muddy River into a Palm Springs-like resort. The plans call for two four-story hotel-casinos with restaurants, bars, meeting spaces and retail areas surrounded by golf courses.

Most residents of the upper Moapa Valley closest to the proposed project are for it because of the jobs and economic growth it will bring.

But lower valley residents several miles away in Logandale and Overton are overwhelmingly against the casinos because it will change their rural lifestyle, said Lanny Waite, justice of the peace for the Moapa Valley Township.

Waite said the community has no objection to gambling per se, but wants to ensure that it maintains its controlled growth rate of around 8 percent.

"We recognize Nevada's economy is based on gaming," Waite said. "It would be foolish to think otherwise.

"But while we recognize that is the state's economy and law, people live here by choice, not because they have to, and put up with the inconveniences of living away from a metropolitan area for a rural community."

The payoff, he said, is that "we can let our kids go out and play without worrying whether someone is watching them, leave our doors and cars unlocked without worry."

The upper valley has about 1,500 people, while the lower valley has the highest concentration with about 4,000 people, Waite said.

A community meeting to discuss the project is set for 7 p.m. April 4 at Moapa Valley High School in Logandale.

Waite and other opponents don't want to see the valley become another Mesquite or Laughlin, riverside resort communities that have attracted an urban population's share of crime, poverty and housing shortages.

"If we had not had the example of what has happened in Mesquite, many of us might have thought that this isn't a problem," said Waite, a lifelong resident of Logandale whose family was among the original Mormon settlers 150 years ago.

Waite said watching Mesquite's transformation from rural farming community to resort destination "has been a real lesson for us."

Growth has brought jobs and a chance for children to stay in the town they grew up in, Waite said, but property values have boomed out of sight, crime has increased and people have lost their rural lifestyle.

"We're not an incorporated town like Mesquite," Waite said. "If something like this were to be approved, would the county be willing to assure us they'd keep pace with that boom growth that would be satisfactory to people in the valley?"

Even though the valley was settled by Mormons, they make up less than 50 percent of the population, and the objections to the project are not religious in nature.

"This is really not a religious issue," Waite said. "It's a moral issue. It's a concern for the lifestyles and values we have. We don't want to lose those, which would be lost if we lose the rural setting."

While some people might paint it as a religious issue, Waite said, the group of people working against the project include Catholics, protestants, Jews, Mormons and people with no religious affiliation or belief in God.

"It is a community concern and a community effort," he said.