Last service

Jace Radke

Monday, July 24, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

From the outside, the tan, box-shaped structure at 2753 S. Highland Drive looks much like any other two-story office building in Las Vegas, but inside a church has found itself at the center of a political controversy.

Eight worshippers attended the last service of the Universal Church For Life Enhancement Sunday at the Highland Office Center in a small, rectangular room at the end of tight corridors lined with Ansel Adams photographs.

"It looks like we just got caught up in some politics, so we'll go back to having our services at a member's house until a new place can be found," Religious Science minister the Rev. Warren Chester said.

The church is moving because of an apparent violation in state law after member Annette Marie Patterson had her father, Bart Rizzolo, notarize a formation certificate to open the church. According to state law a notary public may not perform a notarial act if the person whose signature is to be acknowledged is a relative.

The church opened in April, just two days before the Las Vegas City Council voted to award a tavern license for a proposed topless club only 219 feet away in political consultant Sig Rogich's former office building. In July Ali and Hassan Davari, who are in the process of purchasing Rogich's building, were denied a special-use permit to open the club because the building was within 1,000 feet of the church.

Further fueling the controversy is that Patterson's brother is Rick Rizzolo, who owns the Crazy Horse Too strip club that would be in competition with the proposed club. Patterson also works at her brother's club as a bookkeeper.

Patterson and other parishioners put the controversy behind them Sunday as they listened to Chester's sermon on expanding personal awareness of God and raising levels of consciousness. Chester quoted from the Bible, author Deepak Chopra and Church of Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes.

"I've seen people who have lost something, but they will not receive the loss and they get whatever it was back," Chester said to the parishioners. "We've all heard the stories of someone given a 5 percent chance to live, and they live. That's because of the infinite source of the spirit within yourself."

The church is marked only by a small sandwich-board sign in front of the building and a dry-erase board inside by the entrance to one of the offices. Inside the office framed prints of images from the Sistine Chapel, including The Creation of Adam, break up the otherwise stark white walls, and a green curtain serves as a backdrop behind Chester's podium.

Stacey Chester, the minister's wife, said that the little room has served the congregation well.

"People are sometimes surprised, but there is a church back here," Stacey Chester said.

The congregation uses taped music for its hymns, but only until they get a piano, Chester said.

"It takes a while to build up a congregation, but this is what I love to do," he said. "I've been a minister for 28 years, and we have a good core group here."

Patterson said she is unsure of where the church members will next meet, but she is working on locating what she hopes will be a more permanent home so that the congregation can continue to grow.

With the church moving, the city is already reconsidering the application by the Davari brothers to open a topless club in Rogich's building, the brothers' attorney, Steve Stein, said. If passed, the club on Westwood Drive would be called The Boardroom.