A London-based developer wants to erect an expansive new resort on the site that once hosted Las Vegas’ only racially integrated casino.
Paul Taliaferro, CEO of Psi-Key Entertainment, said his company’s vision for the long-shuttered Moulin Rouge includes a convention center, a film and television studio, an arena and a museum that would showcase the property’s rebuilt and rejuvenated 1950s-era facade and sign.
Plans also call for development of a transportation system that would bring visitors from McCarran International Airport across town to the Moulin Rouge, whose site is tucked away in a far western suburb. Taliaferro told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he is working with Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to gain support for the transportation piece.
The Moulin Rouge opened in the summer of 1955 in the city’s historically black Westside neighborhood and closed after only a six-month run. But it has lingered in the Las Vegas imagination ever since. Numerous proposals have been advanced over the years for redeveloping the site, but they never came to fruition.
Psi-Key is slated to pay $10 million over two years to purchase the property, which has been in receivership since 2004. The sale is contingent on a district judge approving it next month.
Taliaferro, who has been involved with large-scale developments that include several resorts in the Caribbean, told the Review-Journal that as an African American he finds the story of the Moulin Rouge compelling and said he is looking to “uplift” the Westside.
“I think people have been waiting for something positive to come into this community and specifically to see something happen with this site,” he said. “We are quietly confident that things can actually evolve now and be developed in a manner that’s going to be conducive to being able to make this truly a win-win situation for both the community and for ourselves.”
