New rules will try to tackle size of neighborhood casinos

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 | 8:44 a.m.

The Clark County Commission on Wednesday directed county planning staff to draft a new ordinance that would specify how big a neighborhood casino can be and what design elements it can have.

Such off-Strip hotels have become big business in residential areas, but their growth has spawned concern and at times vehement opposition from neighboring homeowners. Recent battles have focused on Station Casinos' plans for new hotels on West Charleston Boulevard and Durango Drive.

Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald said a 1998 state law defines where new neighborhood casinos can go, but lacked specificity on how those casinos should look.

"What we seem to have to deal with repeatedly at this level is what a neighborhood casino should be," she said.

Boggs McDonald, until last year a member of Station Casinos' board of directors, asked planners to convene a stakeholders group that would include citizens, representatives of the gaming industry and of the Clark County School District and Regional Transportation Commission to come up with design recommendations to bring back to the board.

She said the county also should take those recommendations to the Regional Planning Coalition to be shared with the neighboring cities.

"I believe this issue truly is valleywide, and if we could get input from our municipal neighbors, that would be very valuable," she said.

New Commissioner Tom Collins, at his first zoning meeting, worked on the state law that determined where the neighborhood casinos would go. He supported the new ordinance. He said legislators thought they were allowing casinos much smaller than some of the resort-sized hotels going in now.

"A neighborhood casino is definitely not a resort at the magnitude that's been allowed," he said. "A neighborhood casino is a small, little joint with a few extra machines."

The commission asked for the return of the recommendations in 90 days.