Wednesday, Dec. 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Officials at locally based Saint Andrews Golf Corp. are betting $20 million that the public still has a craving for real family entertainment.
That's the price tag for the company's first All-American SportPark project to be built on a 65-acre site at the south end of the Strip by the end of next year.
Planned attractions for the project include a major league slugger stadium, executive par-3 golf course, 27-hole putting course, NASCAR speedpark, training and custom club fitting center and an indoor pavilion and arena.
"There are terms like virtual reality," said Ron Boreta, president and chief operating officer of Saint Andrews, developer of the SportPark. "We call this form of entertainment actuality. We actually put a baseball bat in a person's hand."
But the designers of the SportPark provide much more than bats, balls and mechanized pitchers.
The public will be invited to take their rips while standing at home plate of a regulation major league stadium and looking out at replicas of such famous outfield barriers as the Green Monster of Boston's Fenway Park or the short right field porch at Detroit's Tiger Stadium.
And to ensure that the SportPark, to be built on Las Vegas Boulevard and Sunset Road, remains a pure family-fun type of attraction, no gaming of any type is planned.
"This is a pure sports complex," Boreta said. "In the area there will be in-line roller hockey competitions, tennis matches and other events. We're also including retail shops and a sports bar where people will able to watch all different types of sporting events on high-tech big screens."
Company officials say that the Las Vegas facility will be the first of several planned SportParks in various cities ranging from Orlando, Fla., to Tokyo.
With the development of SportPark facilities, officials at Saint Andrews and its parent company, Las Vegas Discount Golf & Tennis, announced Tuesday they are getting out of the golf merchandise business.
In order to raise money to finance the venture, officials announced that Saint Andrews, which is traded publicly on the NASDAQ exchange, has merged with its parent company, LVDG, and has signed a letter of intent to sell the name: Las Vegas Discount Golf, which stands behind the 42-store franchise, and all the corporation's golfing merchandise to a private group formerly affiliated with the Big O Tire Co.
With the sale, Boreta retains ownership of the first Las Vegas Discount Golf store at 4405 Paradise Road.
Ted Abbruzzese, chartered financial consultant to Saint Andrews, explained the company, which went public two years ago, in 1995 sold $5 million worth of stock at $10 a share to the Sanyo Corp.
Today, stock in Saint Andrew's is trading at $4 a share, but there has not been a rush to dump the stock, an indication in shareholders' confidence that it will go up in value as the SportPark projects are developed.
Abbruzzese explained that through the sale of Saint Andrews stock and through the Saint Andrews-LVDG merger and liquidation of LVDG assets, the company generated nearly $12 million to help finance the construction of the first SportPark.
"There will be nothing in the world like it," Abbruzzese said. "We at Saint Andrews have spent three years designing and perfecting this concept."
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