Tag: jethroscasino

It's an early Christmas in the Max Baer Jr household. After an entire year of wrangling and arguing and appealing, Max and the Douglas County Commission finally came to a compromise that everyone could agree on in regard to the sign for the Beverly Hillbillies Casino. The news so far has been a continuing series of denials by the county, as first Jethro came to them wanting a 200-foot sign, then started chopping it down in increments. Finally this week they hit on the magic number, 90 feet, with 600 square feet of signage. That was the magic spot for the commission to finally say yes and approve the damn thing.

Now it's time to get building. Work on Riverwood has already been going on right next door, so let's see Jethro finally put in some money to back up his mouth and get a few bulldozers on the site.

It looks like work is finally starting on the long-proposed Riverwood shopping center in Douglas County. This center is located at Hwy 395 and Topsy Lane, on the southeast corner. It was first announced back in 2002 or 03 when the Carson Valley Plaza across the street was built, and has had several false starts and stops. The last firm news I heard about it was in May of 2007, when they annouced Kohl's as a tenant and said they would open in October of 2008. Well, they were right about October, but it was the groundbreaking, not the opening, that would be happening then.

Some very large tractors, bulldozers and earthmovers arrived on the scene last week, and started to make quick work of clearing off the sagebrush from the land. This photo above was taken on Saturday, after only about one day of work, and you can see the progress they made in that short time. I went by today to check out their progress again, and they were halfway up the hill.

Now, clearing off the sagebrush isn't all they need to do. This site is on a hill, so they're going to have to flatten things out, just like they did with the Carson Valley Plaza. If I remember right, they spent weeks moving dirt around just to get the site level before they could even think of putting in utilities and grading foundations. So the tractors aren't going anywhere for a while, and I also have to question why they're starting this job in October, when the first snows have already fallen and winter is threatening to hit hard in just a short number of weeks. Maybe they want to get all the earthmoving out of the way now, because that's something they can do in cold weather, then when things start warming up in the spring they'll be set.

This is the same corner where Jethro's Casino is supposed to be built, if they can ever stop arguing about the sign and just get things done. But the casino is going to be built further up the hill. So this work might actually answer a nagging question of mine, exactly where the dividing line between shopping center and casino is going to be. We'll see how far up the hill they go with the bulldozers, and that should settle the question nicely.

I'm getting tired of writing this story over and over and over and over. But the proposed plans for the sign for Jethro's Casino has been rejected once again. Although the sign keeps shrinking every time they submit it; this time it was only 90 feet high.

Keep trying, guys! Maybe in four or five years you'll come up with a plan the county likes. Or maybe you could just stop fighting over this and build that casino already.

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...

Photo by Flickr user mimica

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.