As far as the demolition you saw, Las Vegas Public Information Officer Jace Radke says, "they are working to remove the existing foundation so that it can be taken to the landfill. Republic Services requires that they grind the concrete into manageable pieces." So that would appear to be a positive development, in terms of some kind of activity taking place at the site, even if the owners of the site have been keeping it on the lowdown. Besides, who would want to build on top of a 60-year-old foundation?
As of last June 11, GCA Capital Group’s Leisure division – headed by Robert Pickus, former general counsel to Trump Entertainment – announced plans to "restore the famed resort and casino to its glory, updated for the 21st century." At the time, the "famed resort" consisted of an empty lot, Las Vegas having ordered the site razed to the ground after a suspicious 2010 fire. As a statement of GCA’s intent, it held a one-day "trailer station"-style casino, hosting 16 slot machines for eight hours, to preserve the property’s gaming entitlement.
GCA’s plans for the Moulin Rouge are both ambitious and almost bewilderingly diverse (reminiscent of Glenn Straub's ever-changing plans for Atlantic City's Revel). It intended to host Internet and mobile gambling, film and music studios, a "digital-content creation facility," an institute of unspecified higher learning, while still managing to be "one of the premier entertainment, hotel, dining and gaming destinations in Las Vegas" -- despite being well off the beaten tourist path. Its closest neighbors will be the offices and printing plant of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the new Tenaya Creek Brewery, which just relocated across the street and perhaps will bring some vitality to the 'hood.
GCA Leisure said it had been involved with the Moulin Rouge site since mid-2012, "resolving numerous legal, title and regulatory issues," according to General Counsel George Dolatly. (That timeline means that GCA would have held two biennial "trailer stations" to preserve the grandfathered right to host gaming on a site with fewer than 200 hotel rooms.) As of mid-2014, apparently GCA was still "in discussions with potential co-financiers."
Since that time, however, GCA’s phones have been disconnected and the company is no longer listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, raising some question as to just who is doing the demolition work on the old Moulin Rouge footprint. The company also has not applied for a gaming license for the site, whose gaming entitlement is currently held by slot-route operator Century Gaming Technologies, formerly United Coin Machine Co. (An e-mail query to GCA Leisure produced no response.)
What GCA had when came into the picture was title to an empty lot. The Moulin Rouge, famous for being Las Vegas’ first – and for a long time only – integrated casino had been dormant since 1955, its historical significance disproportionate to its brief lifespan. It disappeared in bits and pieces over the years. In May 2009, its marquee was removed and transported to the Neon Museum.
A few days later, a fire laid waste to the motel portion of the property (the casino had long since burnt down.) The blaze came one day after a foreclosure auction of the property failed to draw any bids. The site defaulted to Olympic Coast Investment. It inherited what then-Mayor Oscar Goodman called "a nuisance … a blight," and Olympic Coast was ordered to raze the charred and asbestos-ridden remnants in July 2010. Olympic Coast was liquidated in a 2012 bankruptcy proceeding -- which brings our story up to the point where GCA Leisure enters the picture.
Having failed to make contact or elicit any response from the last owner we're aware of, we actually paid a visit to the site and found signage naming Rebel Sand & Gravel as the contractor currently working on the foundation-demolition job and what ever else is going on at 900 W. Bonanza Ave. So we placed a call, but Rebel Sand & Gravel was unable to disclose any information about who they were working for or what future plans for the site may entail. They offered to pass on our request for information, but at the time of this writing we had yet to hear back, so you now know as much as we do.
Whatever GCA – if it still exists – plans for the Moulin Rouge, the site will never match the star power of its brief heyday. For one, it played host to entertainers like Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey and Count Basie, who were treated as no better than hired help on the Strip but found a welcoming roof at the Moulin Rouge. The entertainment crossed the color barrier, with other Moulin Rouge performers including George Burns, Jeanette MacDonald, Tallulah Bankhead, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Frankie Laine, Maurice Chevalier, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jack Benny, Sophie Tucker and Frank Sinatra.
While it lasted, the Moulin Rouge was a beautiful dream. It remains to be seen whether GCA -- or some other entity -- can prevail over location and competition to bring that dream back to life.
