Goodman apologizes for comments about Sun story

Dan Kulin

Friday, April 8, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

During his weekly press conference Thursday, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman forcefully objected to a recent Las Vegas Sun story about the city closing most of the rooms in his son Ross Goodman's downtown hotel due to numerous code violations.

The mayor called the story, which was published April 1, "erroneous," "malicious" and "false."

In a phone call to the Sun reporter who wrote the story, Mayor Goodman later apologized for his comments, and said he has learned the story was "primarily accurate."

However, Ross Goodman and Louis Palazzo, who together own the Boulevard Hotel, said they felt the story gave readers an unfairly negative impression of the living conditions for their tenants.

The mayor said his criticisms came after his anger got the better of him when Dana Gentry, executive producer of the TV show "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," asked if his son and Palazzo should be put in jail or forced to live in their hotel for six months, considering the mayor has suggested such a punishment for landlords who let their properties deteriorate.

"When she asked me the question about whether Ross should go to jail I lost it," Goodman said during the telephone call a few hours after the press conference. "She really had pushed my buttons."

During the press conference the mayor said the article was full of inaccuracies and said Neighborhood Services Director Orlando Sanchez, the primary source for most of the information in the story, "was making statements that he had no first-hand knowledge of."

The press conferences are regularly attended by newspaper and television reporters and are also broadcast on the city's cable television station, KCLV, Cox Cable channel 2.

A few hours later Goodman called the Sun reporter who wrote the story.

"I want to apologize. I was out of line," Goodman said.

On March 31 city inspectors went to the Boulevard Hotel at 525 Las Vegas Blvd. South and found numerous code violations in many of the rooms in the hotel that rents by the day, week, or month. The city ordered that 33 of the 57 rooms in the hotel had too many problems to be occupied. Thirty-one of those rooms had no one living in them already, city officials said.

The code violations found in various rooms included no hot water, excessive mold, no toilets, no heat and continuously running water. Each of the rooms deemed too bad to be occupied had more than one of those problems, officials have said.

On March 31 city officials directed media inquiries on the situation to Sanchez, who oversees code enforcement inspectors.

At that time, Sanchez said some of the 40 hotel rooms shut down had tenants who were displaced, but he did not know how many people were affected.

A subsequent story on the subject published Tuesday contained the information that the city actually shut down 33 rooms and 31 of them were not occupied at the time.

Ross Goodman and Palazzo said they were unhappy with the April 1 story because it "created the impression" that people were staying in rooms with no hot water or toilets.

"It makes it sound like the entire hotel is in a state of dilapidation and there was a condemnation," Palazzo said.

Both Goodmans and Palazzo did not return telephone messages left for them the afternoon before the story was published.

Palazzo said that while the code violations listed in the story did exist in some of the rooms that were shut down by the city, he said no tenants were forced to live without toilets or hot water. He said he did not know what the violations were in the two rooms that were occupied and subsequently found unfit.

Ross Goodman said they have spent $54,000 fixing up the hotel they bought in August for $1.3 million.

They have also been in negotiations with developers and are looking to demolish the building and replace it with a high-rise.

Palazzo said now they will move faster with those plans, and will demolish the building within 60 days.

Palazzo said they decided to demolish the building sooner rather than later because of the negative news coverage the building has brought them.

"Since we were going to do it at some point anyway why not do it now and avoid the headache and fodder for more articles," Palazzo said.

The Boulevard Hotel is next to a building Ross Goodman and Palazzo are trying to acquire from Christine Von Sturm, who is in her 80s. They are currently in litigation over their unsuccessful transaction for Von Sturm's building.

Von Sturm's daughter and court filings claim Ross Goodman and Palazzo tried to take advantage of a woman not capable of making such business decisions on her own.

Goodman and Palazzo say Von Sturm was healthy enough to make business decisions, and claim she illegally ended their sale contract.

Both buildings are just south of the Lloyd D. George Federal Building, and on a city block that includes a city-owned parking lot.

City officials are negotiating a development deal with The Related Cos. and downtown developer Sam Cherry for the city-owned property.