Question of the Day - 23 June 2025

In yesterday's QoD, Las Vegas schools were desegregated and Westside continued t be gripped by unrest. Today, we close out our chronicle.

In an effort to reimpose the segregation of Westside, the Nevada Department of Transportation cut off acess to the area from downtown Las Vegas in 2008. It put up a concrete wall that interdicted F Street and once more relegated Westside to second-class status. 

Six rancorous years followed before NDOT backed down. In a joint venture with the City of Las Vegas and at a cost of over $13.5 million, the state agency demolished the wall and replaced it with the Historic Westside Underpass. The underpass was further garnished with “two decorative towers resembling the architecture of the historic Moulin Rouge.”

The agonies of the Moulin Rouge, however, didn't abate. A frequent site of fires, it was definitively leveled in 2009, suspiciously close to its failure to find a new buyer in a foreclosure sale. The site was finally cleared in 2017, after yet another conflagration consumed the last remnants of the venerable structure, whose tower and marquee had long since been demolished.

According to the city, “Clark County makes a bid on the Moulin Rouge site — which is [still] in receivership — but rescinds amid public backlash its plans to build a government building. Multiple offers to buy the site from the court-appointed receiver come in over the next several years, but none are realized.”

A more upbeat chapter in Westside’s history followed in 2016, with the adoption of the Historic Urban Neighborhood Design Redevelopment Plan for the Historic Westside Community, formed in cooperation with the University of Nevada Las Vegas. According to the City of Las Vegas’ Westside history, the plan “represents the desires of community members from the Historic Westside to see appropriate reinvestment.”

Things were pretty quiet on the Westside front until last year, when a new casino-hotel was pitched to the city Planning Commission, dubbed Harlem Nights. Proposed for the now-barren intersection of Jackson Avenue and F Street, Harlem Nights would have encompassed 207 hotel rooms and an 11,000-square foot casino, with a hotel tower rising 22 stories to a rooftop pool. The 22 stories, though reduced from an initial proposal of 60, are still 15 more than the zoning for the neighborhood allows.

“The only thing that can revive the Westside is a casino and hotel. Anybody in their right mind would look at the Westside and see that it begs for development,” the property owner, Shlomo Meiri, told 8NewsNow. Meiri promised “a whole new customer base,” to be achieved by luring Black customers away from the Las Vegas Strip.

Meiri said he had a “100-year plan” for Harlem Nights, but the Vegas city fathers were unimpressed. Perhaps they were fazed by the amount of wishful thinking inherent in the proposal. In any event, both the Planning Commission and City Council nixed Harlem Nights. 

So Westside struggles forward, looking for an economic-development engine or other raison d’être. Unfortunately true to its 123-year-old roots, it's a neglected part of Sin City that could definitely use some form of stimulus.