Idea man still thinking

Richard N. Velotta

Monday, July 3, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Half a decade ago, Southern Nevada entrepreneur Jerome Snyder was riding high.

A former partner in a Southern Nevada health care products supplier, Snyder fashioned himself as an idea man who saw opportunities for new enterprises.

One day he came up with a cool idea: Allow visitors to check luggage for their departing flights at their hotels so that they could stay another few hours in the casino without having to tote their heavy suitcases.

"We had our first profitable month in August 2001," Snyder recently recalled. And the company was on the verge of expanding the concept to Orlando, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Miami.

But the morning of Sept. 11 changed all that for Snyder and the 125 employees who worked for Certified Airline Passenger Services or CAPS.

It didn't take long to understand the repercussions to the upstart venture.

"One of our board members, retired Rear Adm. Cathal 'Irish' Flynn, called me and said he thought everything was going to be all right because there wasn't a bomb on board the planes," Snyder said. "Then he called me a few minutes later and said, 'All hell's breaking loose.' "

Snyder had to close CAPS because the company could not afford to maintain its payroll and leases while awaiting the new security rules from the Federal Aviation Administration and, ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security. But the fact that off-site baggage check-in was a good idea was not lost in the horror of Sept. 11.

McCarran International Airport recently unveiled SpeedCheck Plus, a modified imitation of the CAPS system. The airport has contracted with Bags to Go, an Orlando-based duplication of CAPS, to provide the service in Las Vegas.

So far, the service is offered only at the Venetian for customers flying Southwest Airlines. McCarran spokesmen said other hotel and airline partners may be added this month.

"It doesn't give me a lot of satisfaction to see our idea making money for somebody else," said Snyder, a Henderson businessman who has moved on to other opportunities. "I don't think anybody can do it the way we were doing it. It's a disappointment that we're not doing it, but it's as good a concept today as the day we started it."

Snyder said the new McCarran system won't be profitable until several hotel and airline partners get on board.

He said he did not have any regrets about his decision to close the business rather than wait for new airport security rules.

"It was too much of a burden to carry," he said. "We didn't know what the rules were going to be, and we were fully staffed and paying for the use of a lot of space. We could have gone back, but it would have been extremely difficult."

But there's no need to cry a river for Snyder. His three new enterprises are doing well and keeping him busy.

One venture is an electronic billboard company that flashes messages to people crossing into the U.S. from the Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Juarez and Nueva Laredo. It's called Border Billboard, and among its advertising clients are Coca Cola, McDonald's, Burger King and General Motors.

"We also have MGM and Top Rank on the boards every time there's a fight featuring a Mexican boxer," Snyder said.

Snyder also owns a company that runs the Triple Crown of Polo, a series of polo events staged in Sarasota, Fla.; Dallas; and Santa Barbara, Calif. Matches are broadcast to 220 countries in 12 languages via ESPN2.

And he is also on the board of directors of his son's Las Vegas-based company, KeyOn Communications, which owns and operates high-speed wireless data networks to provide broadband to rural locations.

He considers his son's communications idea to be as good as any of his own - even CAPS.

"I wish them luck," Snyder said of SpeedCheck Plus. "It's a very needed component at this airport."