Editorial: A promise made is a promise kept

Friday, June 18, 2004 | 8:47 a.m.

Las Vegas attorney Mark Fiorentino stood before the Las Vegas City Council in 2001 and made a promise on behalf of his clients, Ali and Hassan Davari, who owned strip clubs in Houston. The Davari brothers had retained Fiorentino to help them get a tavern license for Treasures, a strip club they were then planning to build in Las Vegas near Sahara Avenue and Interstate 15. Because the brothers' Houston clubs were known for their prostitution and drug violations, the City Council hesitated in granting the vital license to sell liquor. That's when Fiorentino promised -- repeatedly -- that Treasures would surrender its tavern license, without a fight, if there were even one conviction resulting from unlawful behavior on its premises.

Based on this promise, the council allowed Treasures to open last fall with a temporary license. During a review of the license in March, Metro Police informed the council that prostitution charges were pending against four dancers for acts committed at Treasures. The council agreed to extend the license for three months, because the prostitution cases had not yet been decided in court.

On Wednesday Fiorentino won a second extension, until the council's first meeting in September, because the cases still hadn't been decided. (It's expected they will be decided in August). But this time he was desperate, as Treasures' temporary license cannot be extended again and will expire in mid-September. If just one of the dancers gets convicted, his clients would be denied a permanent license, as per his promise. "I was an idiot," he told the council in hopes they would let him go back on his promise. "I had no idea what I was saying."

If the city's process for approving licenses is to have any meaning at all, the City Council must not let Treasures out of its promise. The Davaris promised that Treasures would not be like other strip clubs, that it would set a new standard. We see no new standard, but we remember a promise that should be kept.