Columnist Dean Juipe: Strip joint may replace health club

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 9:49 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

An array of Jaguars and Mercedes sit in the parking lot, indicative of what is at least partially an upscale clientele. Valet services are available, as is a car wash for those inclined.

From every appearance, the Sporting House is doing as well as ever. It's where the city's finest pickup basketball games take place and its amenities include a laundry list of sports, dining and interactive opportunities.

It's a celebrity hangout of sorts and over the years has served as a home-away-from-home for the rich and famous. A number of Las Vegans have fond memories of the place, which, based on a Monday visit, is still going strong.

So why is the owner of the Sporting House, in spite of his outward denials, interested in transforming his still-snazzy facility into a topless or nude bar?

Tucked between the railroad tracks and Industrial Road, the Sporting House has been in the news lately as owner Corey Jenkins spars with the Clark County Commission over zoning laws and such trivialities as the distance between his front door and the nearest "adult entertainment" outlet.

Actions do speak louder than words and Jenkins is obviously weighing the option of transforming his health club into still another outlet for sex-related activities in a corridor that has, in the past year or so, stretched well beyond its former boundaries.

With neighborhood bars converting to adult themes at an alarming rate -- three have switched just this year on nearby Valley View and Arville streets alone -- the notion of the Sporting House willingly joining the sleaze parade is more than a little offensive.

In the latest Yellow Pages, adult entertainers and facilities occupy a full 136 pages. That's hundreds and hundreds of sordid options.

The sex-trade industry in this city has proliferated to where it's arguably intruding into your backyard, not only saturating the areas on and westward of Industrial but reaching the point of true excess.

In its midst is this bastion of fitness, the Sporting House. Yet now, it, too, is endangered.

Jenkins says he's just "protecting his investment" by seeking the permits that would allow him to trade in his basketballs for G-strings and turn the gym into an adult cabaret, and that he has no definite plan to make the conversion. But he's going to a lot of trouble and expense to state his case with the county commission, which, thus far, has denied him the appropriate permits on the grounds that the doors of the Sporting House are within 1,000 feet of the doors of an adult bookstore.

The exact footage is under question, as is the legal definition of where one business ends and another begins. Also in dispute is whether the Sporting House deserved to be "grandfathered" past the recently enacted 1,000-foot ordinance.

This is a "political" item and in Las Vegas that usually means influence can be bought and sold, so we'll see how this plays out.

"We don't think our property is shut out from potential adult-oriented business use," Jenkins told the Sun last week, sounding very much like the ribald temptations of T&A have supplanted his concerns of filling jazzercise classes.

He knows that strip joints have their own Jaguars and Mercedes, and a trade could be in the works.