Business briefs for February 7, 2002

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002 | 10:27 a.m.

Fitness club buyer identified

An executive from the Sports Club Co. said Wednesday his company sold the Sports Club/Las Vegas fitness center to Leisure Sports, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based athletic club and hotel operator.

Rex Licklider, co-Chief Executive Officer of the Sports Club Co., said the Henderson fitness club, at 2100 Olympic Ave., sold for about $6.6 million.

Licklider said the Sports Club Co. sold the center because the Las Vegas market is not large or wealthy enough to support a high-end fitness center product. The company's flagship property in Los Angeles charged monthly membership fees up to four times higher than those of the Henderson property, he said.

Leisure Sports developed and operates 14 large-scale, multi-purpose athletic clubs and hotels in California, Oregon, Wisconsin and Nevada.

Suit over gas lamps dropped

Developers of Nevada LLC dropped a lawsuit it filed against Southwest Gas Corp. and two gas lamp makers that alleged it was sold defective gas lamps that allegedly weren't properly installed and maintained at two of its Las Vegas residential developments.

The Las Vegas homebuilder said the homeowners associations for Developers' Aviana and Solitude residential developments alleged the gas lamps there have continually failed to function properly and haven't been replaced despite repeated demands.

Roger Buehrer, Southwest Gas's spokesman, said the lawsuit was dismissed in January after Southwest Gas agreed to maintain the gas lamps for another year and make repairs on a number of faulty gas lamps at the two developments.

Vegas landlord settles with tenant

The owner of Westland Fair, a central Las Vegas shopping center undergoing a major facelift for a new Wal-Mart supercenter and a Home Depot, settled a lawsuit it filed accusing three businesses of defaulting on $38,517 in rents.

Weingarten Nostat Inc., which sued to evict Big Game Club LLC, an operator of three video poker bars at the shopping center including Big Game Club, Meathead Video Poker and Bar and Duke's Saloon, agreed to "forgive all past due and unpaid rents ... until the earlier of (either) the opening of the Wal-Mart or March 1, 2002."

Big Game had earlier disputed Weingarten's claims, saying it would have been able to afford to pay rents had Weingarten not breached an agreement to minimize disruption to Big Game's businesses. Big Game claims its businesses suffered because construction blocked its customers' access to the video poker bars.

Firm's parent's earnings slide

Viad Corp., the parent company of Las Vegas-based GES Exposition Services, reported a 9.4 percent decrease in earnings, but executives said results were still better than they expected.

The company, reeling from an economic downturn in the convention industry that began a year ago and another big hit following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, reported net income of $25.2 million, 29 cents a share, for the quarter ended Dec. 31. That compares with net income of $28.4 million, 32 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier.

The earnings are based on revenue of $375.4 million, down 12.9 percent from the $430.8 million reported in the 2000 fourth quarter.

Robert Bohannon, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Viad, said the company was buoyed by a strong performance by its TravelersExpress-MoneyGram division, a wire transfer operation, and better-than-expected results from GES, due to cost savings and restructuring initiatives.

Convention and event services revenue for Viad's two exhibition companies was $169 million for the quarter, down 31.4 percent from $246.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2000.

Two LV residents named in complaint

Two Las Vegas residents are among the defendants named by the Securities and Exchange Commission in an alleged "pump and dump" scheme involving the stock of New Energy Corp., a small San Diego company.

A California federal court ordered the assets of Barclay and Loretta Davis of Las Vegas temporarily frozen following a court hearing Friday. The Davises are not accused of violations of securities law, but the SEC alleges they are among five people that received $440,000 in proceeds from Geneva Financial, an offshore investment firm participating in the scheme -- and it is trying to force them to disgorge these funds.

The two could not be reached for comment.

The SEC has accused New Energy, a producer of solar energy generator systems, of securities fraud. Also accused of fraud were Marcelino Colt, a resident of Panama and Mexico who claims to be an investment banker; Magnum Financial LLC, a California investor relations firm; Michael Manahan, Magnum's president; and Tor Eward, New Energy's largest shareholder.