Misspelled street sign becomes a royal pain

Friday, June 28, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

Every time native Nevadan and Italian Count Robert Deiro drives past "Count Diero Drive" south of Sahara Avenue at Hualapai Way, he shakes his head.

For more than 15 years he has lived with the misspelling, having long ago thrown up his hands after trying to get officials to correct the error.

"I complained to the city of Las Vegas when I first saw the misspelling," Deiro said. "I wrote a half-dozen letters and got nowhere. I just gave up."

To make a big fuss about it, he said, would have made him and his family look pompous.

No question the family is worthy of the honor. The noble title is real: The Deiros are members of the exiled Italian King Humberto III's House of Savoy. Deiro's father was late Italian accordion star Count Guido Deiro, the second husband of actress Mae West and a prominent Las Vegas resident of the 1940s. Son Guy Deiro now runs the family"s auction company, Robert Deiro and Associates, which has sold items ranging from rare collectibles to hotel-casinos.

Still, the family never sought the honor of a street name, Robert Deiro said, and they decided to let it rest when initial requests to fix the spelling failed. Only when a newspaper reporter recently noticed the error did Deiro decide to go public with his frustration.

Officials for the county and city are sympathetic, but they say there's not much they can do.

The misspelling of the street, anchored on the Clark County side of Hualapai by a school and on the city of Las Vegas side by Lake West Drive, was created by developers, they say.

They add that they cannot be held responsible for proofreading proper names of subdivision streets, nor can they change the misspelling without proper authorization.

Underscoring that point was the one attempt to fix the mistake, which led ultimately to the wrong spelling covering up the correct one, Deiro said.

That happened in the late 1990s, when Deiro, while working at a charity event with former Las Vegas Councilman Arnie Adamsen, told the councilman about the dilemma. The signs for the street, which at the time ended at the city limit, were fixed in less than a month.

"I thought that was the end of the matter," Deiro said.

But about a year later Clark County extended the street on the county side of Hualapai and, using existing maps and the developer's spelling, named it "Count Diero Drive."

"For a short period, there were two different spellings," Deiro said. "Then one day all of the signs on the city side were changed back to 'Count Diero.' I couldn't believe it. What still bothers me today is why would the city spend taxpayer money to change them back?"

The city did not spend the usual $50 to $150 per sign to replace them. Someone simply printed white on green "ie" decals and pasted them over the "ei" on the city's street signs.

The blistering desert sun and other elements have caused some of the decals to start peeling, giving Deiro hope that one day they will just fall off and at least half the street will have the correctly spelled signs.

County and city officials say Deiro has only two roads he can take to correct the problem. The first would require the time-consuming petitioning of all of the abutting property owners.

The second and easier route would be for county and city officials to submit name change proposals to their planning departments to begin what could be a several month process. That still could result in the name not being changed for a number of reasons, including inconvenience and safety concerns.

"Street name changes generally do not occur without some controversy," said Clark County Zoning Adjuster Chuck Pulsipher, who said he is willing to submit the name change request if Deiro requests it in writing.

"One big factor that Mr. Deiro has in his favor is that there are no homes on Diero Drive. That usually is a big problem, because people get upset when they have to change their stationery and inform all of their friends and relatives that their street name has been changed."

The request also would have to be approved by the fire departments, which check for similar sounding names to avoid any potential misunderstandings during emergency situations.

Name changes to correct spellings are rare, Pulsipher said. Ironically, he said, in the early 1980s, there were four spellings for Hualapai. They were changed to the current spelling for uniformity.

Las Vegas requires one extra step: a vote by the seven-member City Council, John Koswan, a city planning official, said

"Correcting the mistake is not so much something for me or my father, but for my entire family, as we still do a lot of things in Las Vegas, from operating a business to charitable work -- and we'll continue to do so." Deiro said.

"I get reminded of the signs all the time," he said. People "come up to me and say, 'Is that street supposed to be named after you? You know it's misspelled?' It's just embarrassing."