Art Deco-themed hotel set for for Tropicana Ave.

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002 | 10:52 a.m.

By his own admission, Marvin Lipschultz said not very many people saw "Terror on Alcatraz," a 1986 prison thriller he produced in his Hollywood days.

But he's betting millions of people will get a glimpse of his next production, a proposed 24-story, 460-unit hotel-casino and timeshare property known as the South Beach, on the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Industrial Road.

The Clark County Planning Commission will consider Lipschultz's project tonight, the first step in what's expected to be a two-year process to revamp the 3-acre property that is now home to a Howard Johnson hotel, an International House of Pancakes franchise and the Golden Palm, a cozy 5,000-square-foot locals casino with 57 slot machines.

The Planning Commission staff has recommended approval of the project, including height and setback waivers that have been requested.

Lipschultz hopes to raze the decades-old building next summer and build a $115 million Miami Beach art deco-themed complex that would be two-thirds occupied by timeshare residents. The remaining rooms and any timeshare units that are unoccupied would be offered to hotel guests.

Lipschultz, who already holds a nonrestricted Nevada gaming license, would expand the casino to 26,500 square feet and install 714 slots, including 24 bar-top machines, 10 table games and a 10-seat sports book.

The South Beach also would have an 8,340-square-foot restaurant. Lipschultz hasn't determined whether the Howard Johnson and IHOP franchises would be a part of the development.

A 24,000-square-foot recreation deck and pool will be designed by Lifescapes Inc., Las Vegas, which created the Caribbean village around Treasure Island's Buccaneer Bay. Four levels of underground parking also are planned.

Lipschultz is considering developing the entire project in phases. The redesign has been contracted to Bergman, Walls & Associates Ltd., which helped develop the Paris hotel-casino.

The 320-foot hotel room tower, which would front the Tropicana Avenue side of the property, would have views up and down the Las Vegas Strip of the back sides of resorts. The hotel will be located just off Interstate 15's Tropicana Avenue exit, a block away from one of the largest concentrations of hotel rooms in the city.

"There's probably no better view of some of these properties than from right here," Lipschultz said from the roof of the six-story Howard Johnson, which he has owned for 2 1/2 years.

"There's a sidewalk from our property right down to the Strip," he said. "We're right on the doorstep and our guests don't even have to worry about Strip traffic."

Lipschultz's company, known as Gold Rush Casino & Hotel LLC, is privately held. He would not elaborate on the private funding sources he is tapping to finance the project.

He said he took the Gold Rush name when he incorporated in the state in 1996, thinking he was going to develop a property by that name in Wendover. He never did and when he acquired the Howard Johnson, he found that the Gold Rush name had already been taken by a small Henderson casino on Sunset Road that holds the rights to the name in Clark County.

Lipschultz, who says he has made his living as an entrepreneur, turned a massive home next door to Chicago's Playboy Mansion into condominium units and sold them in the mid-1970s for $100,000 each. Today, that same real estate sells for about $1 million a unit, he said.

He developed real estate in a suburb of Denver and in Aspen, Colo., and built more than 1,000 homes, 700 of them in the Las Vegas area with his Cimarron Investment Co. LLC.

In the mid-1980s, he produced films in Hollywood, including a "rockumentary" about California rock-and-rollers Jan & Dean and their musical tour to China and "Terror on Alcatraz," starring Aldo Ray. Although the films weren't box-office bonanzas, Lipschultz and his family parlayed them into appearances at the Oscars and in a film festival in Cannes, France.

Lipschultz's casino-hotel company has 85 employees, including two of his four sons, Erik and Jason, who manage different shifts at the casino. Lipschultz said he hopes to keep his staff during the construction period and will devise a formula to pay workers the difference between their current salaries and what they make at temporary jobs in an effort to retain them.com