It could only happen in America….

Author: Simon Dexter

I’ve always wanted to use that as a title of a blog but never expected it when writing about the worldwide pastime of casinos and gambling.

However, an article in the New York Times caught my eye about a casino which opened in the middle of a vacant parking lot, miles from anywhere and where no customers came in. To top it all, the venue was only open for eight hours for just one day.

The bizarre event took place in Las Vegas which saw a makeshift casino transplanted onto the parking lot. I say it was a casino but a container is a better description.

The reason behind the strange occurrence was to comply with local gambling laws that say for a company to keep their gambling licence for a particular region there must be gambling taking place at least once every two years for eight straight hours.

“It just has to be open to the public,” said Lori Nelson, a spokeswoman for Station Casinos, which owns 16 casinos in Nevada and one in California. “You don’t need to promote it. You don’t need to really have people gamble here. But you do need to have that option.”

When Stations Casino was demolished, the owners still wanted to keep hold of the valuable land despite it being in a crime-ridden area of the state.

The state archivist, Guy Rocha, said to the New York Times he had never heard of such an event.

“I have to admit, I’ve never witnessed it,” Mr. Rocha said. “Nor am I aware of it.”

However, Rob Woodson of the United Coin Machine Company, the company that provided the machines for the day, said: “There are probably four or five places that have to do this in order to preserve their grandfathered zoning rights to have non restricted gaming there. That makes the property millions and millions of dollars more valuable.”

The strangest thing for me was that the container had to be fitted with wheelchair access to comply with US law.

As I said, it could only happen in America.

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