Goodman warns Centennial panel

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 | 9:22 a.m.

Before making a virtual partner out of a major media company that was in default for not providing sponsors for Las Vegas' 100th birthday next year, the Las Vegas Centennial Celebration Committee got a warning from Mayor Oscar Goodman: There is no Plan B if this move fails.

Nevertheless, the committee voted unanimously to have staff draw up a renegotiated contract with Clear Channel Entertainment that will allow the company to provide $1.9 million to the city in incremental payments through next July in exchange for wiping out penalties and deleting timelines for the securing of sponsors.

"If a deal is approved today, this is the only game in town," Goodman said before taking the informal voice vote of the committee that is overseeing the arrangements for next year's centennial. "The city has dealt in good faith."

The alternative to not revising the contract, which will come before the board for approval at its Aug. 9 meeting, was to terminate the current contract with the company that proposes to raise as much as $8 million through corporate sponsorships and find other ways to pay for the birthday party.

Clear Channel to date has paid the city $500,000 in merchandising revenue, independent of the minimum $1.9 million more it will pay under a pact that allows the company to keep 20 percent of sponsorship funds and give 80 percent to the city.

Monday's move "makes us a partner," Bruce Eskowitz, the Houston-based president of Clear Channel Entertainment, said after the meeting. "We believe in the city and we will follow through."

Eskowitz told the committee his company, which missed a June 30 deadline for providing major sponsors, has shown good faith by giving the city $500,000 and promising $1.9 million more while the company has "not made a penny yet."

The new plan calls for Clear Channel to pay Las Vegas $250,000 in November, $600,000 in January, $600,000 in March, $250,000 in May and $200,000 next July -- regardless of whether the company raises any sponsorship money.

The minimum amount of money pledged would cover all of the city's locally planned projects, including the return of the Helldorado Days celebration that was a fixture in town for more than 60 years before folding in the late 1990s over a sponsorship contract dispute.

The city, if necessary, will borrow from funds such as centennial license plate sales money, if it needs operating capital for centennial projects before the dates on which Clear Channel has pledged to pay, Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said.

What the city cannot do under the new agreement is tell potential sponsors who want to bypass Clear Channel and go directly to the city to wait in the wings in case the new deal fails, Goodman noted. In short, the city cannot compete with Clear Channel for funding sources because that could hamper Clear Channel's efforts.

"I'm still very, very skeptical," committee member and Las Vegas Councilman Gary Reese said before making the motion to draw up the renegotiated contract. If Clear Channel does not come through with its part of the deal, "what's going to happen to our centennial celebration," Reese asked.

Former governor and U.S. senator Richard Bryan, a committee member, said: "This is not the situation we expected to be in. We are between a rock and a hard spot. ... Still, I have to believe in Clear Channel." Bryan said that if Clear Channel does not come through, its reputation will be severely damaged.