Henderson City Council kills plan for neighborhood casino

Adrienne Packer

Wednesday, April 8, 1998 | 10:09 a.m.

HENDERSON -- Three hundred residents who attended a City Council meeting Tuesday to protest a proposed hotel-casino left without saying a word to council members.

The council followed the Planning Commission's recommendation and swiftly dismissed Gaim-Ko Inc.'s plan to build a 200-room hotel-casino near a Boulder Highway neighborhood.

Even if the council had approved the casino, Gaim-Ko Inc. may have been denied a gaming license due to its owner's troubled past.

Neither Gaim-Ko's attorney Joe Diaz nor John Marchiano, who represented the New Mexico-based company's partner, Vegas Ventures, chose to argue for the casino-hotel proposal.

"I don't think Mr. Marchiano has ever encountered a group as tenacious as we," said Edwin Thomas, a Henderson resident who helped organize his neighbors to battle the development. "I think he was surprised at our effort; it was based less on emotion and more on fact."

Thomas said hundreds of volunteers went door-to-door to rally their neighbors and to deliver fliers to adjacent communities to alert as many people as possible about the proposed casino.

"It was a real grass-roots effort," he said. "We worked on it for six to eight weeks straight."

Residents who live near Sausalito Drive were prepared Tuesday to repeat concerns they presented to the Planning Commission in February.

They feared the 38,000-square-foot building would generate too much traffic, increase noise and raise the crime rate in their neighborhood. They were also concerned their children would be lured into the casino.

"It's just too close to the neighborhood," resident Susan Schultz said. "We were told this was a clean place to live when we moved here two years ago, then they started to put junk in it."

Council members said the Planning Commission did a thorough job of studying whether a hotel-casino was compatible with the adjacent neighborhood and opted not to overturn its decision.

"I think the Planning Commission did an excellent job in discussing this item," Councilman David Wood said. "Their concerns should be part of our record."

The agenda item regarding Gaim-Ko's proposal attracted Albuquerque, N.M., media, who have closely tracked shady dealings involving Gaim-Ko owner Raymond Gallegos.

According to stories published in the Albuquerque Journal, Gallegos allegedly furnished slot machines to Indian reservations when casino gambling on reservations was in violation of federal law.

The Indian casinos that Gaim-Ko supplied violated the federal Gaming Regulatory Act because they did not secure a compact -- a written agreement between the tribe and the state in which the tribe is located, the newspaper reported.

The Act also says equipment suppliers are entitled to 10 percent of the machines' take. Yet in 1992, Gallegos' firm Games Best Enterprise signed a contract with an Indian casino that allowed the firm to take 40 percent of the earnings, according to the paper.

The Gaim-Ko owner also has filed for bankruptcy four times; he has a history of bad debt, foreclosures and liens, the paper reported.

Gallegos' attorney at the time, James Toulouse, said that while the tribes may have broken the law, his client did not.

Diaz, who attended Tuesday's meeting on behalf of Gallegos, left the council chambers immediately following the decision and was shuttled away in a limousine.

Henderson City Attorney Shauna Hughes said the city does not issue business licenses to casino operators until they have secured a gaming license from the Nevada Gaming Commission.

The commission does a thorough review of not only the applicant, but all the key players in the operation.

A state Gaming Control Board investigator said Tuesday that Gaim-Ko Inc. had not yet applied for a gaming license.