Henderson shoots down hotel-casino at River Mountain

Valerie Miller

Friday, Feb. 27, 1998 | 12:39 p.m.

The Henderson Planning Commission Thursday night denied a request for a 200-room hotel-casino overlooking the River Mountain residential area after close to 200 residents turned out to protest the proposal.

The request for a use permit involved the commercially zoned area between Boulder Highway and Sausalito Drive, just north of Racetrack Road.

Commissioners voted unanimously to turn down the request by developer Gaim-Ko Inc. citing incompatibility with the neighboring areas and failure to follow the city's comprehensive plan's recommendations.

The developer's plans called for a four-story structure overlooking nearby homes -- a concern voiced by many area residents at the meeting.

"This hotel is going to be looking down at our homes; at our children's bedrooms, and we don't want that," resident Ron Taylor said.

Other concerns raised by neighborhood residents opposed to the hotel-casino included increased noise pollution, litter and crime, as well as decreased property values and an overall lower quality of life.

"This is a residential area, and we don't want a 24-hour establishment here," said Mike Williams, whose comment was met with a loud round of applause from other residents.

Commission Chairman Danny Sanders requested several times that the boisterous crowd withhold its applause, as the opponents of the hotel-casino cheered each other on as they took the podium to speak. Loud snickers and jeers were occasionally heard during the comments made by developers of the project.

Attorney John Marciano, representing the developer, said that he felt that they had satisfied the concerns of the Commission and residents.

"We will have a buffer, with walls on three sides," he told commissioners.

Marciano also cited several recent studies that concluded there was no evidence of a link between casinos and crime and decreased property values in residential neighborhoods.

Marciano asked the Planning Commission to "make a decision based not on emotion, but on the facts and the record" before them.

The Planning Commission, however, wasn't convinced by Marciano's presentation.

"I'm convinced that this proposal doesn't comply with our comprehensive plan," Commissioner George Bochanis said.

"If we are going to take the analysis presented here tonight (by developers), we should just throw away the entire document."