Editorial: Downtown land deal looks bad

Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

It's been a week since we weighed in on the tactics by lawyers Ross Goodman, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's son, and Louis Palazzo to get an 85-year-old woman to turn over to them a potentially lucrative piece of downtown land. Ross Goodman and Palazzo contend that Christina Von Sturm initially agreed in writing to sell them the land for $1.4 million, property that eventually could become part of a city-sanctioned redevelopment deal. The two attorneys also claim, and this forms the basis for a lawsuit they've filed against Von Sturm, that she is backing out of an oral agreement to amend the original contract, giving them an extension to close the deal.

But Von Sturm's daughter, who has hired an attorney, contends that the two lawyers have tried to take advantage of her mother; the daughter is fighting to block the sale, saying her mother isn't always lucid. But this is also more than two men trying to muscle an 85-year-old woman out of her land, including their questionable claim that an oral contract in this situation is valid. Adding to the intrigue is that more digging by reporters has raised serious issues of whether Ross Goodman used inside connections to get an unfair advantage in developing this land downtown.

On Thursday we found out that on July 30 Ross Goodman was sent information from City Hall about who bid on a city of Las Vegas-owned lot downtown that he was interested in -- property that is next to Von Sturm's and which is a couple of lots away from Goodman's property. At the time the information was sent to him, city rules said such information wasn't supposed to be made public. In fact, it was only after the media challenged the secrecy of the rules that the policy was changed in September so that the names of people or companies bidding on city property are made public.

Also this past week we learned that Metro Police said it didn't uncover evidence to support filing elder abuse charges against Ross Goodman and Palazzo. State law prohibits people from taking advantage of senior citizens, but Capt. Rick Bilyeu, the bureau commander of Metro's Financial Property Crimes division, said that this is simply a civil dispute. Bilyeu added that no financial loss has occurred, because Von Sturm still owns her own land. Nonetheless, it is troubling to hear Von Sturm's daughter say that neither she nor her mother's attorney were interviewed by police, something surely warranted since the daughter says the mother isn't always coherent. Based on what we know, we're shocked the police investigation ended so abruptly.

The more we discover about this whole matter the more sordid it seems to become. We're not sure where the rest of this will lead, but so far it is clear that Ross Goodman, Louis Palazzo and Mayor Oscar Goodman -- who have been very reluctant to talk about this -- have a lot more explaining to do.