Detroit adult club feud may be settled in Vegas

Adrienne Packer

Monday, Jan. 29, 2001 | 10:41 a.m.

A feud that has been brewing for years between competing topless cabaret owners along Detroit's club-ridden Eight Mile Road has moved west to Las Vegas, where it soon could be settled by Clark County officials.

Wild Kingdom LLC is scheduled to appear before the county's liquor and gaming board Wednesday to seek a liquor license for a new cabaret.

The applicant is a Detroit family that has been cited for lewd and illegal acts inside its clubs and has a history of crimes such as shootings in its parking lots.

Detroit native Max Markovitz hopes Clark County's liquor and gaming board grants the family a tavern liquor license for his new club at 3510 W. Hacienda Ave., near Valley View Boulevard. Also listed on the application is his son, Alan Markovitz, according to Clark County's business licensing division.

If they are granted a tavern liquor license, which is considered only after a thorough Metro Police investigation, the Markovitzes would likely be given a permit for an adult club, Business License Director Ardel Jorgenson said.

But given the reputation the Markovitzes built with their Detroit clubs -- All Star Sports Bar, Silk Stockings and Trumps -- they might not be the most desirable owners for a Las Vegas cabaret, Detroit community activists have warned, even in Las Vegas, a city built on bare bodies and booze.

"At All Star (Sports Bar), there is loud music and drag racing when they let out," said Michael Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Detroit Community Initiative, a nonprofit agency created to clean up the city. "They have no regard for the community."

The Markovitzes' Las Vegas attorney, Matthew Callister, did not return repeated phone calls.

Blasting music and speeding haven't been the most severe problems clubs owned by the Markovitz family have had during the past several years.

Police have heard complaints that the All Star Sports Bar is a "hotbed of violence," and one neighbor of the cabaret counted as many as 14 shootings during an 18-month period ending in early 1999, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Wayne County prosecutor John O'Hair told the Free Press that police responded to 96 calls at the bar within a six-month period.

Although Detroit newspapers reported shootings, including a homicide, as recently as June, the violence attached to the clubs hasn't been nearly as controversial as the lap dances they offer. Lap dances are illegal in Detroit.

When the topless clubs owned by Markovitz began allowing lap dances more than four years ago, Detroit police began raiding all of the city's cabarets to ensure they weren't offering the erotic dance.

The raids infuriated Markovitz's competitors, who turned against him.

Fisher's organization picketed the club, and Trumps was temporarily closed by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission, which also threatened the license of All Star Sports Bar.

Markovitz's competitors responded to the lap dancing violations and resulting raids by creating the Detroit Coalition of Adult Entertainment Clubs to try to make all cabarets comply with the law.

"If we didn't start working with the police, they would make rules we couldn't live with, like distance clauses," which require a certain distance between the dancer and patron, said Lydia Sweatt, a former cabaret owner who helped form the coalition.

Detroit's sex club saga continues today, only the battlefield has moved to Las Vegas, where Sweatt and Markovitz are once again facing each other.

Sweatt, who also lives in the Detroit area, was part-owner of the Hacienda property in Las Vegas, until her business partner sold his interest. Sweatt reluctantly sold her interest. She said Max Markovitz's low-ball offer was accepted by a broker; she never intended for him to have the club.

Sweatt and Fisher believe that Markovitz's interest in the Las Vegas club is payback for Sweatt's meddling in his affairs in Detroit. They also are concerned Markovitz might have enough political pull in Las Vegas to be granted a license, though they do not substantiate the claim.

The end to the Detroit drama is likely to unfold on Wednesday in front of the liquor and gaming board.

"I do think this is an attempt to pay her back," Fisher said. "Naturally the coalition put a lot of heat on Trumps and All Star. They caught hell."