When Dodge City’s casino opens, its patrons will be allowed to smoke — but only in certain areas.
The Dodge City Commission amended its smoking ban Monday night to allow smoking on the casino's gaming floor and an adjacent lounge area. The zone will be equipped with "Smoking permitted" signs and an air ventilation system designed to eliminate the possibility of smoke drifting outside the zone.
The system would use several strategies to eliminate drifting smoke, including slightly negative air pressure within the smoking zone and a slightly positive air pressure for the rest of the building, according to a Jan. 5 letter from the Olathe-based engineering firm Smith and Boucher.
Smoking will still be prohibited in other areas of the casino complex, including restaurants and a hotel.
The city's smoking ban outlaws the practice in local businesses unless they have special zones where smoking is permitted. Those rooms must have four impermeable walls, maintain a negative air pressure and include a ventilation system that exhausts air from the room directly to the outside.
The ban includes a short list of exemptions, including private membership-only clubs and specially designated motel rooms.
The original ban focused on existing businesses, and it did not include the casino because the state had not yet selected a developer for it, Dodge City Fire Chief Dan Williamson told the Globe on Friday.
Also, city officials thought the Legislature might adopt a statewide smoking ban which would have exempted state-owned casinos — although that never materialized.
City Manager Ken Strobel said Monday that city officials had two options in amending the smoking ban: Either exempt the casino from the ban altogether, or modify the requirements for creating a smoking zone.
"We felt probably the simplest thing to do was to basically exempt the casino from the requirements of the ordinance but then, by policy, come back and re-impose requirements that would allow smoking on the casino floor but not in other parts of the building," he said.
Commissioner Monte Broeckelman wondered whether amending the ordinance would set a precedent for other businesses that wanted to allow smoking.
"My question is, what are we going to do with the next one that wants this?" he said. "We've made every other business in town comply with this. I mean, what are you going to do?"
But Strobel said that the casino is unique because state law bars other developers from building a similar complex in Dodge City for at least 15 years. He noted that apart from the gaming floor and the adjacent lounge, other areas of the current casino would be covered by the ban.
Commissioner Brian Weber said he wished that the city could grant the same exemption to other businesses.
"It would be nice if we had some way to say, 'If you want your whole facility smoking and you have the financial means to do it...,'" he said. "I wish we could extend that to them."
But Commissioner Jim Sherer said that businesses could choose to set up smoking zones, complete with air ventilation systems, if they wanted to allow smoking.
Broeckelman and Weber both voted against amending the smoking ban, while the other commissioners backed the proposal.
Reach Eric Swanson at (620) 408-9917 or e-mail him at eric.swanson@dodgeglobe.com.
