Monday, April 25, 2005 | 10:45 a.m.
A solution to the controversy surrounding neighborhood casinos may lie in creating a new licensing category, members of a Clark County committee studying the subject said Friday.
The proposal, put forward by committee member Danny Thompson, could limit the square footage of neighborhood casinos.
The panel was created in January to study what constitutes a neighborhood casino and whether design restrictions should be put in place to govern the height and make-up of the properties. Opponents of neighborhood casinos say the county needs to protect neighborhoods from Strip-like development in more suburban parts of the county.
Thompson, who is also executive director of the Nevada AFL-CIO, suggested the guidelines would create a category "in between" small bars with gaming licences and the large-scale Strip resorts, although the committee has yet to pinpoint how to implement such a policy.
Committee member John Hiatt said the issue is likely to continually rear its head as Southern Nevada continues to grow.
"The real fight is not going to be the megaresorts," he said. "It's going to be resorts versus neighborhoods. That's something this group needs to address."
Unions including Culinary Local 226 have opposed Station Casino projects including Red Rock Station now under construction on West Charleston Boulevard, trying to block land-use approvals needed by the nonunion company.
A survey conducted by Las Vegas-based Magellan Research but paid for by the union met with heavy criticism at the meeting, after committee members questioned whether the wording in the largely oppositional study may have influenced the answers.
In it, pollsters found that roughly three-fourths of the 600 valley residents surveyed disagreed with a commission decision in December to build a hotel near Rhodes Ranch less than 1,500 feet from an elementary school and 700 feet from homes.
The question, however, failed to mention that the Clark County School District acquired the land for the schools after the hotel had already been approved, Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald, a former Station Casinos board member, said.
Boggs McDonald proposed the neighborhood casinos committee after sometimes contentious debate arose before the commission.
While current law precludes gaming companies from building within 1,500 feet of a school or church, no such provision exists to keep schools or chuches from building within the same distance of an existing or planned casino, she said.
"It's a dishonest question," Boggs McDonald said. "... Everyone was putting the blame on the county when it went to the School District."
Changes to the law barring both sides from building within 1,500 feet of each other would likely be fought in court. The commissioner said the union may have deliberately left out the information as to when the school was built.
"When the facts are known it looks different," Boggs McDonald said. "But the truth is we (Clark County) would go to court and we would lose."
The union's survey was one of two often-conflicting and admittedly inconclusive studies put forth during the meeting. Another, conducted by Strategic Surveys on behalf of Station Casinos, found residents living near Boulder Station, Green Valley Ranch Station and the Suncoast largely enjoyed the benefits of living near stores, restaurants and gaming.
That survey, which asked residents if they agreed with hotels that included movies, shopping and bowling in their neighborhoods, was criticized by committee members who opposed neighborhood casinos.
"You include things that would be appealing to any neighborhood, but you don't talk about scale," committee member and activist Carolyn Edwards said.
Hiatt said both surveys' questions were flawed and did not present an entirely accurate picture of how nearby residents felt about the projects.
"Depending on how you ask the question, you can get whatever answer you want," he said.
Committee chairwoman Terry Murphy, who owns Strategic Surveys, agreed that the conflicting results were difficult to discern. She suggested that existing disclosure laws for would-be homeowners near casinos were not enough.
"I think it was inconclusive, the studies," she said. " ... I think there should be a big sign saying, 'This is what could be here and you should know it.' "
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