Tag: jethroscasino

Again the Douglas County Commission has told Max Baer Jr. that his casino can't have a big sign. The rest of the project has been approved, but he keeps pushing on the sign. Jethro needs to decide if this is the hill he wants to die for.

The Record Courier has brought us the blueprint for Jethro's 2,400 square foot sign. Look at the little tiny man standing at the bottom of it. That will give you an idea of how big this thing is. There are two articles to go along with it: Beverly Hillbillies sign fails first test, and Baer’s big sign still looming.

Now remember, this sign is going to be on the north side of the hill. So even though it's Douglas County that gets to approve or deny the sign, the majority of Douglas County residents won't have to look at it. But it's perfectly placed, right across the highway from Best Buy, so that it will shine brightly like a beacon and be visible from every part of Carson City. Its size and position, looming at the top of the hill overlooking the whole town, reminds me of something else, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

After years of trying, Max Baer Jr. is this close to building his dream casino. He has the land, he has the zoning variances, he has approval from the county, he says he has the money, but there's no way to know if that's true. Everything is in place, and he should be ready to build. So why hasn't he started yet? He's still fighting over the sign.

He started by wanting a 200-foot tall oil derrick shooting flames as the sign the draw people to the casino. That was denied, so he scaled it down to 143 feet, the same height as the hotel towers. That was denied, so then he cut it down to "a 109-foot tulip-shaped sign". The Planning Commission just denied that, too. The Commission says that the limit on signs is 30 feet, and that's plenty. Jethro, apparently, just wants to keep chipping away until he can find a compromise. And since the process can take three to four months each time, it could be years before they finally hash out a number and get to building.

Also the article talks about how the sign face would be 2,423 square feet. That is an unfathomable number. That's bigger than my house. I don't think the casino in Las Vegas have signs that big.

I think it's time to give in and just start building. He got 98% of what he wants for this project. Don't worry about the sign. The draw is going to be the hotel building itself, perched on the hillside. A sign isn't going to make too much difference. The time for talk is over. Now it's time to put shovels in the dirt.

Max Baer Jr. sat down with USA Today for an interview. In it he mentions that Jethro's Casino is planned to open in 2010: "Either it will happen or I will die; there's no stopping me." Considering the number of obstacles he's run into, I would say there's no stopping him. Everyone in town has tried.

I'm not believing anything about opening dates until I see some ground broken, though.

County rejects Beverly Hillbillies casino derrick. Sometimes you have to wonder about the depths of self-destructiveness that Max Baer Jr. is capable of. After fighting for over ten years and plowing through three counties, he's finally found a spot to build his big dream casino. He's finally got zoning approval from the county to build a casino. He's finally got height variances to build a hotel tower. He has everything he needs to move forward with the project. And now he's fighting over the sign. The sign?

Originally his plan was to build a 200-foot oil derrick out by the highway that would spurt fire 24 hours a day. That soon scaled back to where there was no fire, probably because the price of natural gas keeps rising. Then the county said 200 feet was way too high for a sign, so he dropped it back to 143 feet, the same height as the hotel tower that was approved. The county's response? Still too high.

Jethro's people have said this sign is essential to draw business to the casino. Although I'd think that the massively big hotel-casino would be a draw in itself. I don't think anyone is going to zip right by this huge casino complex plastered on the side of a hill, missing it completely, but then spot the sign at the last second. That's nuts.

In similar sign news, the North Carson Crossing shopping center in Carson City (the Wal*Mart center - where College Parkway meets the freeway) just got their request for a 65-foot sign denied for similar reasons. A 45-foot sign has been approved for the center, but the developers say that won't stick far enough into the air to get attention. Their big concern, I guess, is that they want their sign to rise way above the freeway, instead of just a little bit above. The Board of Supervisors disagreed. And now, in the grand tradition of four-year-olds everywhere, the developers are saying they won't build a sign at all. Well. That will teach them.

And one more tidbit from the Record Courier article, the Gold Town casino project, which has been in the works for 15 freaking years, got approval from the Douglas County Commissioners.

Phase one will include the hotel and 92,000 square feet of casino space, 50,000 square feet of retail outlet shopping, restaurants and a convention facility. Costs are estimated at $125 million for the first phase,

Phase two includes a parking garage, conference center, event center, casino expansion, retail space, spa and wellness center, according to information from county officials.

Gold Town will be located at Hwy 395 and Sunridge Drive, right next to the Silver City RV Park.

Jethro gets another thumbs up. The Douglas County Board of Commissioners approved the zoning changes needed to build Jethro's Casino across the street from the Clear Creek Plaza. But this still isn't final approval, because his huge oil derrick and electric sign won't be decided on until December 6th. I think those parts of the project are completely unnecessary and by all rights should be denied. It's not like his 12-story hotel is going to be invisible and nobody will find the place if the sign isn't big enough.

So I guess I'm not the only one who thought that having a casino named Jethro's just one block from a casino named Bodines might lead to a little confusion. But the article in the Nevada Appeal today is not about Max Baer Jr's problems with the Bodines name, it's about CBS thinking they own the name forever, in perpetuity, for any possible type of business. And the owner of Bodines, Mike Pegram, rightly telling them to go screw.

So it seems that CBS was willing to overlook the fact that there's been a restaurant named Bodines in Carson City for 20 years. They probably didn't even know it existed. But now that the name is being hoisted onto a new casino, being built on the same land, suddenly they have a problem with it. They claim they own the rights to that name because of the Beverly Hillbillies TV show, and any use of it goes against their trademark. Of course this is ludicrous, because Bodines has been there forever and took the name from a business partner, not from TV. The owners of Bodines have responded that they're not changing their name, which I applaud them for.

And I'm sure the only reason this is an issue at all is because of the remarkable coincidence that Max Baer Jr chose the same part of town to build his Jethro's Casino in. Max does get a chance to chime in at the end of the article, saying that it's unfair for them to use that name because it's his name, and they're trying to ride his coattails.

"Since 1962, I have been known as Jethro Bodine," he said. "People come up to me all the time and call me Jethro or call me Bodine. I have been indoctrinated with that name so much so that it stopped my career as an actor. I couldn't get jobs as an actor because people thought I was Jethro Bodine. I don't know how much more familiar you could get with that name."

Yeah, my name's Scott but I'm not going around trying to stop people from making toilet paper. Sometimes you just have to realize there are coincidences in life, and suck it up.

Max Baer Jr's fight to get his Beverly Hillbillies casino approved in Douglas County hasn't been much of a fight at all. After his plan was mostly approved by the Douglas Planning Commission last month, he had to go up against the County Commission this week for final approval. And, he got final approval, including approval for the two hotel towers that the Planning Commission had said no to.

So it looks like this time Jethro's casino is actually going to get built. Or, at least, all his excuses have been taken away from him this time, so if the project falls through for a third time, he'll have no one else to blame. So now it's time to see if Jethro can actually do it, and actually get the thing built.

With all the flap that's been going on about Jethro's Casino being built up in the hills across from Wal*Mart, another big casino project has been able to slip by almost unnoticed, until the Nevada Appeal highlighted it today.

The Brownstone GoldTown Hotel and Casino is being planned for the corner of South Sunridge Drive and Hwy 395. If I'm right, this is on the piece of land next to the Silver City RV Park that has been rumored to be getting a casino for about a decade now. Unlike Jethro's, this casino will definitely be down in the Carson Valley, and depending on how tall their 300-room hotel is, it could possibly be seen from all over the valley. Although I'd imagine the same restrictions that Jethro is currently fighting also apply to this Sunridge site, so the owners of GoldTown have probably designed their building to fit within the county guidelines, thereby avoiding all the trouble Jethro's gotten into. That means a short, squat hotel complex, rather than a big tower.

Construction is supposed to start by the end of the year, with Phase One open in 2009.

So this marks the third big casino project for the Indian Hills area. GoldTown will be at the bottom of the south slope, Bodine's will be at the base of the north slope, and Jethro's will be up on top of the hill. One of the commenters at the Appeal brings up the obvious question: "Just where are the patrons for these mega casino's coming from?"

Update: This photo shows where I think the project location is going to be. Just this side of the RV park you can see where the land was cleared away for a casino nearly a decade ago. We'll see if they have any better luck this time.

So the zoning change request for Jethro's Casino was approved on Tuesday, meaning most of the hurdles are cleared and they can start moving forward with phase one of the project. But it wasn't all good news for Jethro; the county denied some of his special variance requests, including the 200-foot tall oil derrick, the huge lighted sign that would have hung from it, and the 12-story hotel towers he hoped to build as phase two.

So we'll see now what Jethro's response will be. Will he be happy enough just that he's being allowed to get the thing built, finally, after fifteen years, or will he try to fight for some of these extras that were denied? The oil derrick isn't a killer for the project. It could still open and be successful without such a flashy beacon bringing people in. 200 feet? The Ormsby House is only 117, and you can see that from all over the Eagle Valley. I still have my doubts whether you could see the oil derrick from the Carson Valley, since it would be hidden on the opposite side of the hill, but at that height it just might be possible. Anybody have a red balloon and a 200-foot long string?

Now, denying the hotel towers is a bit more of a blow. I don't know what kind of market research Jethro did to show that those towers would bring in the people and always be full, but if there was a chance that they would be, the county turned down a lot of room tax revenue in exchange for aesthetics. I guess that's a trade-off they were willing to make, and one that Big George has to be happy about, but again: would that hotel tower have been visible from the Carson Valley? Where everyone is worried about ruining the views? Because that whole Topsy Lane area is kind of a "bonus" zone for Douglas County, a good place to put development that will be in the county, but not in the valley. Topsy Lane keeps the valley free of Wal*Marts and hotel towers, while still bringing in all the money that those ventures bring in. So I think that if you're going to let a developer go hog wild anywhere in Douglas County, Topsy Lane is the place to do it, while letting Carson City deal with the aesthetics.

So now Jethro's got the ball, and we'll see if he's willing to take these lumps and build a slightly smaller version of his dream, or if he'll keep on moving.