Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LOOKING IN ON: CITY HALL

Las Vegas and one of the city's rougher bars have settled a complaint against the bar with an agreement that calls for the owners to sell within six months and ups the age of those allowed inside to 25, among other conditions.

Squiggy's, located in a small strip mall on the 500 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard, was targeted by police for its high volume of calls for service and the seriousness of the incidents there.

When the council first took up the complaint against Squiggy's owners in early August, Councilman Lawrence Weekly raised concerns that the city was considering penalties that appeared to target minorities. For example, people wearing gang colors were to be barred from the bar, and the jukebox would be silenced because certain styles of music supposedly excited the patrons.

Weekly, the only black member of the council, said those proposed conditions sounded like racial profiling.

During last week's council meeting, City Attorney Brad Jerbic apologized for offending anyone with those proposed conditions, which were not included in the latest settlement agreement.

Weekly said he was satisfied with the latest conditions, which call for the owners to sell the bar within six months. Also, Squiggy's will be open only to those 25 and older; the bar will close at 2 a.m. daily instead of being open 24 hours a day; the owners, Danny Piper and Joseph Bunch, will pay the city a $20,000 penalty; and the owners will provide security inside and outside the bar.

Squiggy's landed in front of the council, which had the power to revoke its liquor license, after police were called to the bar 260 times from January 2005 through March 31. The more serious incidents included a June 6 shooting in which one man died, a Jan. 6 fight in which a woman was stabbed and a Feb. 17 shooting just outside the bar.

A proposed lawsuit settlement headed to the Las Vegas City Council next month would net the city six condominiums and terminate the complaint from property owners who had accused the city of trying to bully them into selling.

The condos, near the intersection of Vegas Drive and Decatur Boulevard, once were included in land being sought by former Councilman Michael McDonald, who still hopes to build a senior housing complex in that area.

The proposed settlement would cost the city almost $1.35 million, far more than the $750,000 a city appraiser said the properties are worth. However, Jerbic recommended that the council approve the agreement to settle the lawsuit and acquire the properties.

McDonald and the city still are negotiating a deal to sell the former councilman land in the area, most of which is the former site of the Wonderworld shopping center. The land occupied by the surrounding condos is not part of the deal now, but McDonald said he also is interested in acquiring that property.

"Our first proposal included them, and then we amended it," McDonald said, explaining that the condos property was dropped because the city was having difficulty acquiring the land. "Now we could just go back to the original plan."

Two years ago, three property owners who control six condominiums sued Las Vegas, claiming that the city had been pressuring residents of the Decatur Gardens and Shalimar Gardens condo to sell.

The city, for example, filled the Decatur Gardens swimming pool with dirt, an action city officials said they had to take because the city would have been liable for any accidents there. The lawsuit also claimed that the city piled debris on residents' patios, removed lights, sprinklers and alarms, and boarded up condos as they bought them, making the entire complex appear abandoned.

Las Vegas, which has demolished all of the condo buildings except for those occupied by the holdouts, decided in 2002 to acquire the aging residential units because the city was having difficulty generating any interest in developing the nearby Wonderworld shopping center.

The condos are directly behind the shopping center, which also was demolished several years ago.

The city had bought the decaying commercial property at the urging of then-Councilman McDonald .

Eighteen months after McDonald left office in June 2003, he returned to City Hall with a concept to build a senior center and low-rent senior housing on the site .

In February, McDonald entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city for the roughly 13-acre site. The city has spent about $6 million to acquire and clear the land.

McDonald originally said he would be willing to pay $8 million for the land. But a subsequent appraisal valued the property at $6.5 million, McDonald said, adding that he hopes to purchase the land at the lower price.

Plans for Las Vegas' coveted 61 acres downtown have been tweaked again, this time to give Newland Communities the right to buy additional land under its management agreement with the city.

Newland, which started with the right to purchase eight acres, now has the rights to about 14.7 acres as part of the deal under which the San Diego-based company serves as the city's primary consultant and negotiator for development of the Union Park project.

In return for the rights to the additional land, Newland has agreed to make its first purchase from the city by the end of 2007 instead of 2008, a change expected to move up the construction timeline for Newland's part of the development by at least a year.

The company is expected to purchase its first chunk , a nearly 5-acre parcel, for about $10 million. Any purchase price would be offset by Newland's expenses related to helping develop Union Park.

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