Richland, WA Gambling & Gaming: Card Room Licensing (2026)

RMC § 23.42.100 sets locational criteria that keep house-banked card rooms out of Richland's residential and family-serving areas. Subsection (A) prohibits a house-banked card room within 500 feet of any area zoned for residential purposes, expressly naming the R-1-12 and R-1-10 single-family zones, the R-2 medium-density zone, the R-2S medium-density small-lot zone, and any single-family zone the City adopts later. Subsection (B) adds a 500-foot buffer from any public or private K-12 school existing at the time of application, and subsection (C) does the same for any public playground or public park existing at that time.

Subsection (D) measures every buffer as a straight line, ignoring intervening buildings, from the nearest point of the card room's parcel to the nearest point of the protected parcel or zoning boundary. The section also protects investment already made: under subsection (E), if a house-banked card room is legally established and a residential zone, school or park later locates within the 500-foot buffer, the card room's zoning conformity is unaffected, and it may continue operating as approved. Subsection (F) goes further, providing that if a court ever finds Richland's card room zoning unconstitutional or illegal, the City will still let existing house-banked card rooms continue as legal nonconforming uses rather than shutting them down outright.

Card rooms in Richland fall under Title 23 zoning as a use subject to these separation requirements, layered on top of whatever state gambling licensing the operator must separately hold from the Washington State Gambling Commission before opening.