Group would convert club to museum

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2002 | 11:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A nonprofit group trying to save Nevada's first major interracial hotel-casino in Las Vegas -- the Moulin Rouge -- is applying to the state Commission on Cultural Affairs for $1.4 million to buy the resort.

The building, on Bonanza Road near Martin Luther King Boulevard, would be converted into a museum and used to promote African-American culture.

The application was submitted by the Moulin Rouge Museum & Cultural Center Inc., whose president is Steve Rybar, a former FBI agent in Las Vegas.

It is one of 31 applications seeking $9.4 million in grants the cultural affairs commission will consider over the next two days. The commission has $2 million available. Decisions are expected Friday.

Moulin Rouge organizers eventually want to spend $7.9 million to buy and restore the resort, which last closed in November 1995.

The Moulin Rouge, when it opened in 1955, quickly became an after-hours gathering place for entertainers, both black and white, and later played a role in the desegregation of Strip hotels.

Its success was short-lived. The Moulin Rouge closed five months after its initial opening. Since then it has been reopened several times, but never restored to its original glory.

The hotel was the site of a civil rights meeting on March 25, 1960, between Gov. Grant Sawyer and black leaders, mediated by Las Vegas Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun. The meeting led to Strip hotels ending a policy of desegregation.

"The Moulin Rouge was the site of one of the most significant developments in the city's modern history," Katherine Duncan, museum founder, wrote in her application to the state.

Plans for the Moulin Rouge call for the hotel-casino to be refurbished to tell the history of the struggle for civil rights in Southern Nevada and to remember artists and athletes who appeared there.

The other Clark County applications include: