Monday, Aug. 20, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.
On a scale of economic hierarchy in Las Vegas, casinos sit at the top, then maybe restaurants, then taverns, In-N-Out Burger and convenience stores.
Wallowing near the bottom are pawn shops and high-interest loan/check-cashing joints.
But perhaps no other business elicits more groans from residents who want downtown Las Vegas to shed its worn-out, crime-bedeviled, grit-but-no-give image than the bail bond office.
And there are a multitude of them.
It hasn't been much of an issue in Las Vegas because, well, any new business downtown has been welcomed with open arms.
But the city doesn't need to accept just any business anymore.
And you could question whether future residents of Juhl or other new high rises would relish walking past yet another bail bonds office, especially when there are so few restaurants, coffee shops and bars to visit.
So why has the Las Vegas Planning Commission recommended approval of a new bail bonds business within a stone's throw of some of the new residential developments? Is there no way to mingle some of the less savory aspects of urban life with the finer elements that a city like Las Vegas is trying to attract to reinvigorate a once-dying inner city?
A quick Internet search yields almost 100 bail bonds businesses in an area from about Stewart Avenue, where City Hall is , south to Charleston Boulevard and bound to the east and west by Las Vegas Boulevard and railroad tracks.
Some cities are taking steep steps to slow the proliferation and density of bail bonds offices in their redevelopment areas.
In downtown Los Angeles around Little Tokyo, which like Vegas abuts a jail and an arts district, the city forbids new bail bonds offices from being opened in ground floor office space.
One defense attorney acknowledged, in the Los Angeles Business Journal, the legitimacy of the businesses but added that "if you see a lot of them in a particular area, you figure it's not exactly a part of town you want to be in."
Other communities, such as Long Beach and Santa Ana, Calif., are adopting measures restricting bail bonds offices. In those two cases, though, the cities are making sure the bail bonds offices are close to jails and stay out of residential neighborhoods. In Las Vegas' case, some of the new high-rise residential buildings are within a half-mile of the jail.
So what's the city to do?
In the multi block Arts District between Las Vegas Boulevard and the railroad tracks, clustered around Charleston Boulevard, business restrictions already are in place - and there are no allowances for places with names like Bad Boys, Honest Abe's, A Way Out, Godfather's, Wise Guys and too-many-to-count bail bonds businesses that begin with "A" for good placement in the Yellow Pages.
There are 252 bail bondsmen in Nevada, and there are 40 or so more every year, according to the Nevada Insurance Department.
Councilman Gary Reese, whose ward includes areas where bail bonds offices proliferate, doesn't think the problem is so bad that the city needs to put on the brakes.
"If we feel like we're getting too many of them, it's like massage parlors , we'll have to stop them."
Stephen Kreimer, executive director of Professional Bail Agents of the United States, a Washington, D.C., association that sanctions bail agent associations in 13 states, says the reality of the industry is a lot less dramatic than TV and movies would have you believe.
"This isn't a glamorous thing. Most times you just sit and sit and wait and wait and sit and sit. Then, it can also be very dangerous and very hard work."
There's a notion - Kreimer doesn't buy it - that the business is growing because tough judges are increasing bail amounts beyond the reach of most defendants.
Bail bonds companies act as middle men between the courts and the accused. Typically, bail bonds companies will cover the bail of an accused for a 10 percent fee. If a defendant is given a $10,000 bail, they pay $1,000 to the bonding company. In return, the bonding company guarantees the defendant shows up for court. If not, the bonding company owes the court $10,000.
That isn't, however, why bail bond companies need to be close to the courts and jails. Kreimer says that many times bail bonders need to visit a jail to interview a potential client who needs some quick cash to get sprung.
So if an office is at Interstate 215 and Tropicana, the miles and expense and time add up for someone who might have to make a few trips a day to the Clark County Detention Center.
"This is one of those businesses where, if a bondsman wants to interview a client, he can't say, ' Here's my address; can you be there at 3 o'clock?'" Kreimer said. "Many times we have to go to the client in jail."
Therein lies the rub.
By their presence, these businesses conjure up images of crime in the downtown neighborhoods that we're trying to dress up. "The truth is, I'd rather have them down around the jail and the attorney's offices than near regular neighborhoods," Councilman Reese said. "That's part of the whole urban vibe of downtown."
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