Thursday, June 17, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.
The Las Vegas City Council is to decide the fate of Treasures at its first meeting in September, after a nearly three-hour discussion Wednesday that featured an abject apology from the strip club's lawyer and the revelation that the city and county are working on new rules to regulate behavior in adult businesses.
Mark Fiorentino, one of at least four lawyers representing different parts of the Davari brothers' strip club empire, which stretches from Houston to Treasures in Las Vegas, told the council he had no business making the promise that Treasures would give up its liquor license without a fight if any prostitution convictions resulted from law enforcement visits.
"I was an idiot. I had no idea what I was saying," Fiorentino told council Wednesday. He told council members they were suffering the consequences of his promise because now they are faced with a tough decision resulting from "something I could not live up to."
He told council members that if the standard truly is one conviction, "just take the license today."
A liquor license is considered "privileged," and applicants undergo intensive background checks before the city of Las Vegas determines whether they are suitable.
The Davari brothers, Hassan and Ali, were under intense scrutiny because of problems Las Vegas detectives said were endemic in their Houston clubs. The no-convictions standard was agreed upon after a complex battle to open the $30 million club, which was granted a temporary liquor license with a six-month review in 2001 and opened in the fall.
Four dancers were charged with prostitution counts shortly after the club opened. The cases are expected to be decided in August.
When the six-month review came up in March, the council -- excluding Mayor Oscar Goodman, whose son is a lawyer for the club, and Councilman Michael Mack, who is a consultant for Treasures -- voted 4-0 to delay any action on the license until the prostitution cases were decided.
Wednesday, the council -- again minus the abstaining Goodman and Mack -- basically decided the same thing. However, this time the council is on a deadline. The temporary license expires in mid-September, and cannot be renewed, which means the only way Treasures legally can sell liquor after te expiration would be to receive a permanent license, City Attorney Brad Jerbic told council.
In addition to the deadline, and Fiorentino's apology and attempt to remove the agreed-on one-conviction standard, several sub-plots emerged.
One is that Texas authorities recently filed a civil lawsuit against the Davari brothers, alleging irregular banking practices, and seized $2.1 million from a Davari brothers bank account. That could be a cause to pull the liquor license, if the Davari brothers are found guilty of any wrongdoing, something their Texas lawyer Paul Nugent vehemently denied, but it's likely to be years before that case is settled.
Another sub-plot revolved around the issues of regulating strip clubs, whether it was fair to hold Treasures to a higher standard than other clubs, and whether local governments ought to give police better guidelines to crack down on behavior that crosses the somewhat fuzzy line separating the legal from the illegal in the world of adult entertainment.
Jerbic presented council with a survey of erotic dance ordinance violations and prostitution citations at other strip clubs in the city. The survey found that Treasures was "no better or worse" than the other clubs.
Det. Stacy Rodd said the point was not whether Treasures was the same as other clubs. "We were looking to them to follow through what they promised," he said.
Fiorentino said that the club did set high standards for its employees, and read through a list of steps it took, including the recent hiring of a former vice officer to train managers on how to keep dancers -- who are independent contractors -- from stepping over the line.
And he said, "if in no other way, just by the fact that we're having these goofy public discussions ... I think we have raised the bar."
Councilman Larry Brown suggested it was time to look at the overall erotic dance ordinances. For example, current rules allow dancers to touch patrons, something that many other cities have attempted to ban through "separation" requirements.
"If there is no separation, it's going to come down to an officer's discretion," Brown said.
That's when Jim DiFiore, the city business licensing manager, told council that he had been meeting monthly with Clark County officials to look at a unified ordinance for both jurisdictions.
Just before council voted to delay a decision until the September meeting, Councilman Gary Reese went back to the promise made by Fiorentino and the club owners.
"If there was a conviction today, we would have had a problem," Reese said. "The bottom line is, a promise is a promise."
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