Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 | 9:10 a.m.
Southwest Residents for Schools and Neighborhoods First, a citizens group opposed to the casino, will meet at 6:30 p.m. today at Wayne Tanaka Elementary School, 9135 W. Maule Ave.
The Spring Valley Town Advisory Board is scheduled to consider the extension of time for the project's use permit and design. Town board meetings are held at 6:30 p.m. at the West Flamingo Senior Center 6255 W. Flamingo Road.
The Clark County Commission is scheduled to consider the use permit and design at its Dec. 8 meeting, which starts at 9 a.m. in the chambers of the Clark County Government Center, 500 Grand Central Parkway.
Veterans of several high-profile battles over neighborhood casinos are scaling up for another fight over a proposed project, this one near Rhodes Ranch in southwest Las Vegas.
Station Casinos plans to build a 216-foot-tall hotel on Durango Drive, just south of the Las Vegas Beltway outside Rhodes Ranch in the Spring Valley township. The issue promised to drag the company back into a contentious fight. Station had to fend off strong opposition to its Red Rock Station project in Summerlin in western Las Vegas earlier this year. Now it looks like the long-planned Durango Station will run into similar resistance.
The Clark County Commission is scheduled to consider an update of Station Casinos' plans on Dec. 8, where the opponents have promised to try to kill or scale back the project. Many of the opponents were involved in the Red Rock Station fight, as well as an effort in 2000 by local developer Triple Five to build a casino in Spring Valley.
"We are gearing up for a battle," said Lisa Mayo-De Riso, a community activist and veteran of the first two fights over neighborhood casinos. The Triple Five casino, which was not a part of the county's master land-use plans, was approved by the Clark County Commission -- and helped doom the political career of then-Commissioner Lance Malone for his support.
The Triple Five project was not included in the list of approved sites for neighborhood casinos passed by the Legislature in 1997, and ultimately a special state board denied the project, citing negative impacts on the surrounding residential community.
The Red Rock Station project four years later won approval from the County Commission, but activists successfully knocked 100 feet off the proposed 300-foot central tower.
Mayo-De Riso said the task might be more difficult for activists on the Durango Station project because it was originally planned for the location as far back as 1997, and the County Commission approved a use permit allowing the 216-foot height in 2000.
Unlike the Triple Five effort, the Durango Station site was permitted in the 1997 legislation restricting new neighborhood casinos. Mayo-De Riso said, however, that the opponents have opportunities because the the design review and use permit for the height, barring an extension, expires in January.
Mayo-De Riso said Station Casinos and the county should recognize that conditions have changed in the area in southwest Las Vegas since the original approval. Most significantly, Wayne Tanaka Elementary School has opened, and hundreds of schoolchildren would be walking by the hotel if and when it opens, she said.
A park and playground also are slated to go next to the school, which would be less than a half-mile from the hotel, Mayo-De Riso said.
Spring Valley resident Anna Radford, who has four children, agreed. Radford is also a veteran of land-use battles affecting Spring Valley and Rhodes Ranch, including the Triple Five casino.
"We don't need a casino there. Period," Radford said last week. "When it was just dirt, and there was nothing out there, then it was something to think about. But to put something like that up there now with the schools, the churches and the houses, it's just not appropriate now."
She said the county's approval already on the books should not be fixed in concrete.
"Nothing is hard and fast," said Radford, a nursery school teacher at her church and a counselor at Las Vegas' Women's Resource Center. "People told us you couldn't fight the other (Triple Five) casino. Nothing is impossible."
Radford and other neighbors have formed Southwest Residents for Schools and Neighborhoods First to fight the project.
Radford said her concerns are the traffic, crime and other problems she believes will come in if Durango Station is built.
Radford and Mayo-De Riso said that if they lost the land-use fight, they would try to block the liquor and gaming approvals that the County Commission also must grant before Durango Station could open.
"I'm considering anything that's legal at this point," Radford said. "It's quality of life for the people around us. It's not going to hurt Station Casinos to not have that casino there, or even a casino of that size.
"If you stand at Tanaka (school) and look out, that is going to completely be a casino in front of them," she said.
Leslie Pittman, Station Casinos vice-president for corporate and government relations, said the company has survived other disputes over casinos and has tried to work with communities when possible.
"We've gone this way before," she noted. What is different this time, Pittman said, is that the project is likely years away from construction -- probably 2008 or 2010.
"We will certainly meet with those people. We have never built a casino where we did not meet with the neighbors ... We would like to meet, but (would rather wait) for it to get a little bit closer before we have those meetings."
Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald, who represents the area, wants those meetings to happen. Boggs McDonald, who served on the Station Casinos board before her appointment to the County Commission in April and her election earlier this month, said it is probably impossible to eliminate the casino -- but she has concerns about the design, including a nearly 200,000-square-feet casino floor approved by the commission in a design review two year ago.
"Even I believe 196,000 square feet is excessive," Boggs McDonald said.
Boggs McDonald noted that the county's original development agreement with Rhodes Homes that paved the way for the building of Rhodes Ranch allowed the project, as did the legislation that was passed the same year.
"The first issue is whether there will be a casino in Rhodes Ranch," she said. "There absolutely will be because of these 1997 actions. Fast forward to today and the question is what kind of casino gets built at this site.
"I believe that through the use permit as well as the design review the county still has leverage to bring the casino and the neighborhood together to reach a compromise. I want to allow some time for the company and the neighborhood to come together to strike some kind of compromise to ensure that it is a neighborhood-friendly casino, similar to what you would see at Green Valley (Ranch) Station or what is currently being built at Red Rock.
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