Expo will showcase LV black-owned firms

Grace Leong

Thursday, April 11, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

The publisher of the Las Vegas Black Business Directory, which lists more than 150 black businesses in the Las Vegas Valley, this weekend is conducting an event highlighting local black-owned businesses.

Detroit businessman Don Barden, the only black person in the country who wholly owns a major Nevada gaming resort, is one of several black business people who will be honored at the event.

The event Friday and Saturday at Cashman Center is expected to showcase more than 100 local and black-owned businesses in Las Vegas and draw between 5,000 and 7,000 visitors. The event will feature a health fair, business and health seminars, fashion shows and black food and culture presentations.

Warren Maxey, president of the Las Vegas Black Expo and publisher of the Las Vegas Black Business Directory, said he was motivated to organize the first Las Vegas black expo because of the success of other black expos in promoting black businesses in Indiana and Chicago.

"Don Barden will be given the National Spirit award at the (expo's) banquet on Friday. His role as a mentor is pivotal because he's the first black businessman to own a Nevada casino and his success shows if you have the desire, talent and eventually the finances, you too can succeed," he said.

Barden's company controls the Fitzgeralds hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas.

Catherine Blieka, Fitzgerald's director of marketing, said Barden "feels strongly" about supporting the black business community in Las Vegas. John Edmond, a Las Vegas real estate developer who will also be honored at the expo, agreed.

"Barden will become the focal point of history as to real true growth of African-American businesses in southern Nevada because of the fact that he's allowed to buy gaming property here and gaming is the thrust of our economy," he said. "Over the course of the next three to five years, he may bring a lot of capital investments to Las Vegas."

Edmond, who acquired Golden West Shopping Center in West Las Vegas in 1980 -- which Maxey described as the largest piece of real estate then owned by a black person in Nevada -- said many blacks have made inroads in the legal, medical, technology, construction and retail businesses in Las Vegas in the past three decades but noted that "not enough is being done to promote minority hiring at management levels."

"I was one of the first few African-Americans to be employed in gaming in Las Vegas in the 1970s. Back then, many of the African-Americans hired in casinos were either floormen or dealers. Today, many of them still are," he said.

"One of the good things about this expo is that it highlights large Afro-American owned businesses," he said. "Not many people know that Shack Findley Honda is a black-owned business or that Rainbow Medical Center (which has seven branch operations in Las Vegas) is owned by Dr. Anthony Pollard, a black doctor."

Tim Williams, a Las Vegas-based black attorney who made a $1,000 donation to the expo, said the expo provides opportunities for start-up businesses to find financing.

"One of the biggest problems we face is undercapitalization of small businesses, the lack of starting capital and seed money."

Edmond agreed. "My advice to start-ups is that you should try to market your product to all of Las Vegas. You can be a black business owner but you shouldn't feel that your customers have to be all black. This is not Chicago or Detroit."

Edmond, owner of Nucleus Investments, said his company is developing Edmond Town Center, a 100,000 square-foot retail shopping project at H Street and Owens Avenue that is scheduled to be completed by February 2003. Edmond said he will also develop Enterprise Park, a 260,000-square-foot office building at Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards. The $30 million project is expected to be completed by January 2004.