The Nevada legislative session may have ended weeks ago, but a new report from the Nevada Independent is alleging that state lawmakers secretly amended a decades-old casino zoning law without notice or public input in order to benefit a development from Red Rock Resorts.
According to the report, Red Rock owns a 125-acre plot at Las Vegas Boulevard and Cactus Avenue, and the company would like to designate a specific 25-acre portion of the plot that faces Las Vegas Boulevard as a gaming enterprise district, which in Nevada is defined as a parcel of land that has been approved by local authorities to house an establishment with a non-restricted gaming license.
The problem, however, is that the piece of land in question is located within 1,500 feet of Dennis Ortwein Elementary School, even though Interstate 15 divides them —state law (in the form of SB266) previously barred any casino developments from going up within 1,500 feet of schools or places of worship.
In order to help with this quandary, Assemblywoman Shea Backus sponsored an amendment to SB266 that created an exemption for interstate highways to serve as an acceptable barrier between casinos and protected residential sites.
Per the Independent, the exemption only applies to developments located within the Las Vegas Boulevard gaming district with a size of over 20 continuous acres; Red Rock’s request checks both boxes.
The legislation was introduced and adopted by the Assembly the same day, June 4, and the following day it easily passed the Assembly by a vote of 40-2 and was approved by the Senate just before the session adjourned at midnight with no discussions in either house.
Governor Joe Lombardo then signed the bill, AB266, into law June 13.
Michael Britt, a Red Rock spokesman, told the Independent that the amendment will also benefit future projects for other companies down the road, and was happy about the fact that Red Rock now has “the full ability to use the entire piece of land as we see fit for gaming.”
The outlet also noted that neither Backus nor other legislative sources responded to multiple requests for comment on AB266.
Before the recent changes, the zoning law had rarely come up since its introduction in 1997—in 2003 Boyd Gaming was prevented from building a casino in Spring Valley due to a nearby school and church, and Wynn Resorts was able to amend the law in 2008 to allow for part of the Desert Inn Golf Course to be absorbed into its gaming district, which eventually became part of Encore.
In the last 18 months, Red Rock has had a flurry of real estate transactions, buying and selling large tracts of land throughout the Las Vegas Valley as has been its strategy for decades. The company often purchases plots in underdeveloped areas of town for the chance to cash in on future development, and sells them off if the opportunities don’t materialize.
As of now, Red Rock controls over 500 acres of undeveloped land in southern Nevada, and in 2021 company officials made headlines by proclaiming that its goal was to double its footprint in the region by the end of the decade.
The $780 million Durango Station casino resort in the southwest corner of town is slated to open by year’s end, and the company is expected to move on to a 45-acre plot in the upscale Inspirada community of Henderson after Durango is up and running.
