Thursday, January 29, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'FROM ITS ASHES': Group buys historic site

Moulin Rouge's famed features are to be built into new hotel

Moulin Rouge Development Corp. officials, from left, Chief Operating Officer Chauncey Moore, Chief Executive Officer Dale Scott and Senior Vice President Rod Bickerstaff discuss their plans to rebuild the historic property on Bonanza Road. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Las Vegas firefighters battle the arson fire that consumed the historic Moulin Rouge on May 29. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO

A group of black businessmen has bought the historic Moulin Rouge property in hopes of accomplishing what could not be done during the casino's heyday five decades ago: Make it a financial success.

The Moulin Rouge Development Corp. announced this week that it acquired for $12.1 million the casino, which was gutted by fire set by arsonists last year.

On the 15-acre property, which in 1955 became Las Vegas' first integrated casino, officials plan to build a $200 million hotel and casino incorporating the original structure's most recognizable features.

"The world has not forgotten the Moulin Rouge," said Rod Bickerstaff, the corporation's senior vice president and general counsel. "It will rise from its ashes."

An event marking the purchase and unveiling of the company's plans is scheduled for this evening.

The corporation plans to build a 40,000 square foot casino with 500 hotel rooms. The complex will feature a 117,000 square foot events center, Motown Cafe, movie theaters and community center.

The building's facade, neon sign and trademark tower, which stands with the help of metal supports, will be incorporated into the new casino. Other structures not leveled by May's fire could face the wrecking ball.

The property will include a replica of the original property's Tropican-can showroom, where after-hours shows would draw the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Harry Belafonte and Frank Sinatra. The shows and atmosphere lured white patrons from downtown and the Strip to the property five years before segregation formally ended in March 1960.

The agreement between civic leaders and representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that ended segregation was signed at the casino. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The group plans a museum and cultural center to preserve that history, said Dale Scott, the company's president and chief executive.

"We can't live in the past," he said, "but we can celebrate the past."

Scott said he envisions the rebuilt Moulin Rouge will become the catalyst for redevelopment of west Las Vegas.

But word of another attempt to resurrect the Moulin Rouge was greeted with skepticism by academics and casino industry experts.

After its grand opening in 1955, the Moulin Rouge stayed open as a full-fledged casino for six months before the property closed to bankruptcy.

In the five ensuing decades, it has seen come and go a series of owners and unsuccessful attempts to return the property to its original grandeur.

"The history of this casino is really more one of trying to bring it back," said Hal Rothman, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor. "Its revival has been longer than its life."

The casino's location, necessary because of segregation, works against a comeback, said casino industry expert Bill Thompson.

With the availability of neighborhood casinos, residents are unlikely to brave the Spaghetti Bowl traffic to travel to Bonanza Road, where day laborers seeking work and homeless people pushing shopping carts are common sights, he said.

The low income neighborhood surrounding the site is unlikely to produce enough customers to support it, Thompson added.

"It's not the place to put a casino," Thompson said. "An affluent person of whatever race in Green Valley is not going to say, 'I'm going to go and spend my evenings there.' "

But Scott and Bickerstaff said the Palms and Rio are proof that casinos off the beaten path can thrive in Las Vegas. They expect their project will draw equally from locals and tourists.

"If you build it and build it right, they'll come," Scott said.

Their group will succeed where so many have failed before because of the experienced team of executives they have gathered and financial backing, which Bickerstaff said is sufficient to complete the project.

"Historically most of the projects have failed due to a lack of money," he said.

While historian Michael Green, like many others who learned of the group's plans this week, hopes the project succeeds, he said the past suggests otherwise.

"The Moulin Rouge is located in an area that's not segregated by race anymore, but it does tend to be segregated by income," he said.

"It's in a low-income area, which makes it tough for something that elaborate to make it. That's been true for some time. It's not that it's a jinxed location, I hope, but the history almost reads that way."