HOME PAGE
| Saturday, August 12, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Race Car Cafe owner files lien against industrial park By Hubble Smith
Review-Journal The owner of Race Car Cafe, formerly at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has filed for a $6.2 million lien against the industrial park there, claiming breach of contract.
The lien could create a snag in the speedway's plans to sell the 300-acre park and 1.4 million square feet of industrial space, much of which remains vacant.
The speedway interfered with the cafe's contract by closing off the main road to the track, Speedway Boulevard, during National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing and Indy Racing League races in 1999 and during the NASCAR race earlier this year, owner Eric Zimmerman alleges in a counterclaim filed May 12 in District Court.
Zimmerman said he signed a 15-year lease in September 1998 and paid $100,000 in rent, only to have speedway officials deny customer access to his business by closing the road on the busiest events.
A chain-link fence prevented race fans from crossing the street from the parking lot to the restaurant. Some people climbed over the fence to get to the cafe, while others paid security guards $5 to $10 to pass through the locked gates, Zimmerman claims.
"They get 125,000 people out for a race and the speedway wouldn't let me have a hundred customers," he said. "They violated the lease. They shouldn't have let me spend $500,000 and then close me off."
P.T. Tausinga, property manager for the speedway's Research and Development Center, as the industrial park is called, informed Zimmerman in a letter dated Feb. 25, 2000, that traffic would enter the speedway off Interstate 15 for parking in the north lot.
The letter assured Zimmerman that all four gates in the parking lot would remain open for the NASCAR races on March 4-5 "should race fans choose to visit any of our tenants" in the center.
Tausinga said the Race Car Cafe was legally evicted from the premise in May for not paying rent, and no longer has a tenant lease.
"All of the things he's alleging (have) to go to court," said Bob Rourke, director of real estate for Speedway Motorsports Inc., the Charlotte, N.C.-based parent company of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
He said Zimmerman went into bankruptcy and still owes the speedway $120,000 for liens placed by subcontractors who did work on the cafe.
"We're paying for things this guy did arbitrarily and capriciously," Rourke said. "He started a business in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Bruton Smith, chairman of Speedway Motorsports, has been actively seeking a buyer for the industrial park, which he privately purchased from the parent company for about $65 million. He recently indicated the park could be sold within several weeks.
E-mail this story to a friend:
Give us your FEEDBACK on this or any story.
BEST OF LAS VEGAS
Fill out our Online Readers' Poll
 | Printable version of this story |
