The Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority has decided it doesn’t want to enter the gaming business, and for that reason the agency has withdrawn its interest in purchasing the site that once hosted Las Vegas’ only racially integrated casino.
In late June, Executive Director Chad Williams first proposed bidding $5.5 million for the 15-acre parcel on Bonanza Road near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where the Moulin Rouge operated for a only a few months in 1955.
The Housing Authority owns public housing adjacent to the land, and the idea espoused by Williams was to use the site to attract mixed-use retail and a satellite college campus as well as additional affordable housing.
He also envisioned reviving the mostly demolished Moulin Rouge as a casino, contracting with a partner to run it and plowing the profits into shoring up the authority’s finances and funding programs to benefit the surrounding community, a largely African American neighborhood known as the Westside.
Board members were cool to the proposal, however, and it was tabled pending completion of a feasibility study, which was what convinced Williams to declare the plan dead.
“Maybe we can look at it 10 years from now, but right now I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the Housing Authority to acquire this property,” he said when the board met late last month.
However, he did hold out the possibility that the agency would provide an operating subsidy to a developer interested in building affordable housing.
The Moulin Rouge has attracted proposals from would-be developers for years, though none have gotten beyond the talking stage. And the talking goes on, according to Kevin Hanchett, the court-appointed receiver for the land, who said he continues to engage with “a number of potential buyers.”
