No Tiger, No Volcano, No Gamblers

I never thought I'd live in a place where people go to Oklahoma for fun, but evidently a lot of people in Dallas pop over the border to gamble in Indian casinos. Although that's a depressing thought, it's not as depressing as the thought of gambling in this place:

Station Casinos opened a nondescript 40-by-10-foot trailer on a vacant 26-acre plot about six miles east of the [Las Vegas] Strip with just 16 slot machines….

The biggest payout on the bank of video poker and blackjack machines was $2.50….

The trailer…came complete with a portable toilet outside and, to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, a wheelchair-accessible entrance. A casino floor manager sat at one end of the narrow room ready to pay out winnings should there be any.

If that doesn't sound like much fun to you, that's OK, because the trailer casino was not intended to attract customers. Open just for one day, it was intended solely to satisfy a zoning requirement. To retain the option of someday building an actual casino on the land, formerly the site of the Showboat and Castaways, Station Casinos has to offer betting opportunities to the general public for at least one shift every two years. A representative of the company that provided the slot machines for the day explains:

There are probably four or five places that have to do this in order to preserve their grandfathered zoning rights to have nonrestricted gaming there. That makes the property millions and millions of dollars more valuable.