Editorial: Size is the new issue

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.

For several years during the 1990s many residents and politicians fought hard against the proliferation of neighborhood casinos. "Neighborhood casinos are not good neighbors," former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones told the Sun in January 1997. Later that year the Nevada Legislature passed a law banning casino construction within 1,500 feet of schools and churches and within 500 feet of homes.

The law, however, exempted more than a dozen sites in Las Vegas that had already been approved. It also said new sites could be established at highway intersections and within as-yet undeveloped areas -- loopholes that virtually ensured the continuing growth that neighborhood casinos enjoy.

Today, people rarely fight against the right of neighborhood casinos to exist, but they do protest their size. Last year, for example, following neighborhood protests, Station Casinos reduced the size of Red Rock Station now under construction on West Charleston Boulevard.

Clark County commissioners this week directed planners to draft a definition of neighborhood casinos. Their height, their square footage, their number of rooms -- all will be proposed, with input from the public and neighborhood casino companies. This is a welcome, and long overdue, assignment.