Compromises to help fund Moulin Rouge plan

Monday, Feb. 25, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The nonprofit foundation hoping to restore Las Vegas' first interracial hotel and casino and turn it into a museum and black cultural center has a year to raise $500,000 or lose a $100,000 state grant it received last week.

The group will go to the federal government and other governmental bodies to try to raise the rest of the money needed to buy the site, Katherine Duncan, the museum's founder, said.

The Moulin Rouge Museum & Cultural Center Inc. sought $1.4 million from the state Cultural Affairs Commission to put toward a $7 million purchase price for the parcel on West Bonanza Road near Martin Luther King Boulevard.

After commissioners balked at the size of the request, Bart Maybie, owner of the Moulin Rouge and surrounding property, amended his sales offer to lower the opening payment to $600,000, with the agreement he could carry the other $400,000.

Commission Chairman Bob Ostrovsky called the $100,000 grant, approved Friday, seed money to help the nonprofit raise the other $500,000 needed to purchase the hotel.

It was part of just over $2 million the commission granted to groups throughout the state for preservation projects, $464,800 of which went to Southern Nevada groups.

The Moulin Rouge project should have received $250,000 at least, Duncan said. She questioned how many of the other projects were actually preserving a culture. The Moulin Rouge, she said, would preserve black culture.

The Moulin Rouge foundation almost came away from the board meeting empty-handed.

After the first round of grant-giving, no money was allocated for the Moulin Rouge.

Las Vegas Commissioners Kara Kelly, Bob Stoldal and Ostrovsky trimmed other awards to set aside the $100,000 for the hotel.

They ran into opposition from Commissioners Nancy Remington of Elko and Sue Clark, who has homes both in Las Vegas and Reno. Clark tried to make deep cuts in one of the Southern Nevada projects while balking at reducing the amount for one in the north.

At one point, a frustrated Kelly noted that of the $2 million available, "A great part of the money for these projects come from Southern Nevada."

The final commission vote allocated $150,000 to the city of Las Vegas for renovation of the old post office-federal building downtown; $60,000 for preserving a Union Pacific railroad cottage that dates back to 1909 in Las Vegas; $26,800 to help preserve the Las Vegas Academy, which is the old Las Vegas High School; $25,000 for the Morelli House; and $100,000 to restore the gymnasium in Overton.

Dr. Larry Moses, who championed the Overton project, agreed to give up $20,000 in order to help give money to the Moulin Rouge. And the commissioners reduced grants for other projects in order to find money for Moulin Rouge.

So many strings are attached to the grant, Moulin Rouge foundation President Steve Rybar said, "It may not help us at all."

Any other governmental grant to the Moulin Rouge could hit similar legal snags.

State Preservation Officer Ron James told the commission it could not allocate the money to make improvements in a building that is privately owned, unless the museum had an ironclad 99-year lease that it could not be evicted, even if it didn't pay the rent.

Maybie said he was reluctant to give a 99-year lease to the proposed museum that sits in the middle of the structure, especially when he would be prohibited from evicting the tenant if it didn't pay the rent.

Maybie said he has two other offers for the property but has given the nonprofit group first crack at the purchase.