Sunday, Sept. 17, 2006 | 7:25 a.m.
The owners of Squiggy's bar are not going down without a fight.
After reaching an accord with Las Vegas officials last month that would allow the club to keep its liquor license if certain stipulations were met, the owners have filed a lawsuit claiming they agreed under duress.
Attorney Matthew Callister said Squiggy's owners were pulled aside before the hearing and told they better accept the deal or the City Council would take their license away that day.
"It's pretty clear this was a ramrod deal where they (Squiggy's owners) were denied their due process rights," he said.
City officials have described the bar, located in the 500 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard, as a public nuisance.
The petition filed in District Court asks that the court either overturn the conditions placed on Squiggy's or issue a stay of those conditions until a determination is reached in a pending civil complaint against the city.
Those conditions prohibit people under the age of 25 from patronizing the bar and require it close no later than 2 a.m. In addition, Squiggy's owners, Danny Piper and Joseph Bunch, must sell the bar within six months.
In the Aug. 2 complaint brought before the City Council to determine disciplinary action, officials noted police were called to the bar 260 times between Jan. 1, 2005, and March 31. The complaint alleged that multiple murders, beatings and robberies occurred at Squiggy's during that time.
Callister, however, contends the bar's owners are being targeted for incidents that occurred either in a shared parking lot or in an alley behind the bar. He said that despite all the police calls, only three incidents occurred on the premises of the bar and one was an armed robbery in which Squiggy's was a victim.
The Aug. 2 hearing was halted when Councilman Lawrence Weekly raised concerns that the city was engaging in racial profiling. The city wanted to ban wearing gang colors in the bar and silence the jukebox amid fears that certain types of music would excite patrons. Once these stipulations were removed, Weekly, the only black council member, dropped his objections.
Callister, a former Las Vegas Council member, said that he realizes gaming and liquor licenses are a privilege and if he goes before the council, the bar could lose them.
He said the owners have little to risk because the draconian conditions imposed by the council have destroyed the viability of the business.
"We just want to get back on a level playing field, and confront this in City Hall and have them hold a fair hearing on it," Callister said.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and other city officials spoke to a packed house at Wednesday's Insider's Las Vegas Real Estate Tour.
The bus tour was preceded by a presentation from Goodman and other city officials at the Las Vegas Golf Club on Washington Avenue.
More than 200 developers visited several sites in Wards 1 and 5, including the Martin Luther King Corridor, the Las Vegas Springs Preserve and the Meadows mall .
Steve Van Gorp, redevelopment manager for the business development office, was pleasantly surprised by the turnout: "We had about 220 reservations, and it looks like they all showed up."
Van Gorp said that it is important for developers to see potential projects as well as the surrounding neighborhoods.
He said he is encouraged by developments such as the Enterprise Park shopping center project on the corner of Lake Mead and Martin Luther King boulevards. The developer is close to attracting a grocery store to the West Las Vegas neighborhood, Van Gorp said.
"We have needed one there since Vons pulled out a couple of years ago, and we are very close," he said.
Neither he nor developer Lamont Blackstone of DLC Urban Core, would name the interested grocer, but both are confident a deal will be completed soon.
Van Gorp said the city chose DLC Urban Core for the project because it had success attracting businesses to urban projects in other cities.
Blackstone, who had a display table set up at the golf club, said events such as the insider's tour are great for developers trying to attract clients:
"It provides an opportunity for me to make contacts with a lot of prospective companies and vendors for this and other projects."
Van Gorp said most of the attendees were either local developers or representatives of companies that had projects in the city.
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