Heavy opposition to a proposed casino near a Catholic university’s campus outside Dallas has helped stop the project for now, but critics are worried that the gaming company will try again.

“I think we won the first battle of what’s going to be a long series of battles about casino gaming,” Jonathan Sanford, president of the University of Dallas, told the Register on Wednesday.

Las Vegas Sands Corp., which operates casino resorts in Las Vegas, Singapore and Macau, earlier this year sought a local zoning change that would allow it to offer gambling as part of what it calls a “destination resort” on a 175-acre parcel about two-thirds of a mile from the campus of the university, an independent Catholic school whose chancellor is the bishop of Dallas.

That’s currently illegal in Texas, but lawmakers there have considered allowing casinos in recent years. If they do, and if voters approve a change in the state Constitution, Sands wants to build a casino resort near the site of the former Texas Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League played between 1971 and 2008.

While Sands officials haven’t said it publicly, many observers believe Sands would also build a nearby arena for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association. The majority owners of the Mavericks are Miriam Adelson, widow of Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson (1933-2021) and owner of Sands, and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, who is the president and chief operating officer of Sands.

Casino officials say the resort would be a boon to the community, offering convention space, meeting space, hotels, entertainment, sports, cultural events and gaming, adding that it would bring in huge amounts of tax revenue to Irving, a city of about 250,000 just northwest of Dallas.

But opponents — including the overwhelming number of people who showed up at four-hour, six-hour and seven-hour public board meetings last month — said a casino would ruin their community by attracting drugs, prostitution and human trafficking, as well as encouraging gambling addictions.

Community Concerns

Susan Hanssen, a history professor at the University of Dallas, said Irving transplants are what another speaker called “freedom chasers,” attracted by the culture, the education and the business climate.

“The growth that we have is a growth of people who are coming here for freedom. They’re coming here for the churches, for the schools, for the families, for the community, for the jobs that are available in Texas. We have growth. Irving is not desperate. Irving can do better than a casino,” Hanssen said to applause during a meeting of the Irving Planning and Zoning Commission on March 17.

A Sands executive told the City Council during a meeting March 20 that with three highways and the Trinity River around it, the Irving site is “a bit of an island, allowing our development, whenever it is and whatever it is, to be contained and controlled” and that it would have “minimal impact to the surrounding community.”

He said gaming would be a small component of the project — though vital because of the revenue it would bring in — and he touted the pluses of the proposed resort.

The company has not submitted formal plans. But similar projects would cost at least $4 billion to build, employ about 9,000 people with benefits and pay about $85 to $90 million a year in property taxes that can be used for public schools, public hospitals and other government services, said Mark Boekenheide, Sands’ senior vice president of global real estate development.

On March 20, Sands officials withdrew the gambling portion of their requested zoning changes, acknowledging stiff opposition from residents. But Boekenheide didn’t sound ready to throw in the towel.

“We hear the community. We hear you. And we’d like to continue to take the opportunity to work with you to truly understand what a destination resort is, because it’s different than a casino project,” Boekenheide said.

“We’re proposing a destination resort. Large-scale projects that promote leisure and business tourism, a project that generates tax dollars for this community from visitors to the resort, not on the backs of the citizens of Irving,” he said.

Catholic Opposition

The neighborhood near the proposed casino has a distinctive Catholic flavor. A Cistercian monastery abuts the University of Dallas campus, as does a grades 5 to 12 Cistercian boys’ school. The Diocese of Dallas’ seminary and a Dominican formation house are on the campus. A Dominican convent is expected to open on campus later this decade.

The Catholic Church does not condemn gambling, as the University of Dallas president noted in a public letter opposing the casino. But the Catechism states that “games of chance” are “morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others,” and it notes that “gambling risks becoming an enslavement” (2413).

Some opponents of the proposed casino in Irving have framed their opposition in Catholic terms.

Irving resident Daniel Webster showed an image of a rosary on a projector during one of the board meetings while saying out loud an Act of Contrition and then explaining what it means.

“It means to never sin again and to avoid whatever leads you to sin. Casino gaming is a draw to viciousness and crime,” Webster said during the Irving City Council meeting on March 20.

Bainard Cowan, a professor of literature at the University of Dallas, said having a casino nearby would hurt the students.

“The casino in that proposed land area, so close to at least three schools, two religious organizations, churches, would be directly — I want to say more than impacting; I want to say attacking these students who are there and the educational mission that we, that I as a teacher, have toward them, moving them away toward any quest for virtue, for any quest for self-control in life, and into some terrible, destructive habits,” Cowan said.

The Register contacted a Sands spokesman seeking comment on opposition to the proposal and whether the company plans to try for a casino in Irving in the future, but did not hear back by the publication of this story.

‘Ongoing Battle’

Professor Hanssen told the Register she thinks Sands has made what she called “a tactical retreat” but will likely try again.

“Sands was stunned to find such a close-knit, coherent, civic-minded, well-informed citizenry erupt from the dusty plains of Texas demanding family-friendly, community-building, sustainable development rather than predatory casino gambling dressed up in luxury Vegas-style glitter,” Hanssen said by email.

“The larger fight has not been won on either side, the battle is still ongoing,” she said, “but certainly the families of Irving and the University of Dallas won a victory … that took Sands by surprise.”