The Irving City Council will soon vote on the first step in a multi-step process that could bring casinos to DFW.
The city council held a hearing ahead of a future vote on rezoning a section of the city for gaming. During the work session on February 27, the council heard a presentation from Assistant City Manager Phillip Sanders on how a portion of land could be rezoned to allow gaming and resort development.
Sanders’ PowerPoint presentation to the council members acknowledged that “a destination resort may include casino gaming if authorized by the Constitution and laws of the State of Texas.”
The responses of the city council members who spoke were mixed.
“This will be transformational. It will change our city,” Council Member Kyle Taylor (D7) said. “Is it going to have some challenges? Yes. Is it going to have some rewards? Yes.”
Council Member Al Zapanta (D6) said that the definition of gaming will likely not be set for several years and that the state will set it. Zapanta’s concerns focused mostly on where the power substation that services the potential development would be placed.
While Council Member Brad LaMorgese (D2) floated the idea of having town halls to inform the public about the matter, Council Member Luis Canosa (D4) appeared to be the most concerned that this development could move forward without informed consent from the public. His questioning focused on specific details of how a potential casino could be arranged.
Canosa asked if there will be “what some people call ‘predatory gambling’ where … anywhere in the resort there are these slot machines … where every visitor gets offered a drink and there [are] all these little things set up for gaming?”
Sanders responded that that matter would have to be determined by the state.
Canosa later commented that “the most transformational project in Irving’s history” was being undertaken by the council in “three weeks,” from the time of the working session to their vote on the zoning variance. He emphasized that there should be more transparency for the public.
After a few minutes, Canosa’s questioning was ended by the other council members, including Mayor Rick Stopfer, who told Canosa that his questioning was “way off base.” Council Member Dennis Webb (D8) said the questioning was “irrelevant.”
Speaking to The Dallas Express, Canosa explained, “Voting is premature because we still do not know what we are getting and residents do not know what they are getting.” He added, “My main qualm is that Irving residents won’t be able to choose… [They] should be consulted.”
It has been widely speculated that a casino in Irving may be in the works ever since a company affiliated with the Las Vegas Sands Corp. purchased tracts of land near the former Texas Stadium site in 2023. However, for a casino to operate in the city, the area would have to be rezoned for gaming, and significant changes to Texas’s legal code would have to be made.
Gambling is forbidden under Texas Penal Code Chapter 47. State gaming laws can only be changed by amending the state constitution, which requires two-thirds approval in the Texas House and Senate and the approval of a majority of voters on the statewide ballot.
The Lone Star State has had casinos known as “Texas Indian Casinos,” such as the Naskilla Casino, for decades, but they are only allowed to offer certain forms of gambling. However, these casinos were met with significant litigation in the 1990s, and some, like the Tiguas tribe’s Speaking Rock Casino, were shuttered in the early 2000s after a lawsuit from then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn. After a decades-long battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2022, the Tiguas tribe won the right to continue offering limited forms of gambling.
The alleged benefits of gambling are hotly contested. The Naskilla Casino’s website claims that it brings $212 million to the region.
However, the American Gaming Association (AMA) published a report, Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking in the Gaming Industry, wherein it acknowledged that “Traffickers take advantage of legitimate industries and supply chains to find, exploit and traffic victims. This is especially true for the travel and tourism industry — including casino gaming — when properties are unwittingly used to facilitate criminal activity.”