An olive branch: Feuding businesses will try to coexist

After spending tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys, two feuding business neighbors downtown decided to try getting along with each other.

The attorneys for Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel and the Super 8 motel said they would file settlement documents next week in a Clark County District Court lawsuit begun in February over who could use a common parking lot and driveway. The owners of both properties, located on the 1200 block of Las Vegas Boulevard South, had invested in an otherwise blighted section of the street, yet their bitter dispute became a case history of the unintended consequences of redevelopment.

To dismiss the case, both sides will work at sharing the parking lot and driveway. At one point last year, Super 8 management started towing cars parked by chapel patrons in front of hotel rooms, inadvertently taking one owned by a rabbi who was conducting a wedding. Super 8 also painted a line down the middle of the semicircular driveway after complaining that the congestion caused by wedding limousines was scaring off hotel patrons.

In addition, Viva Las Vegas owner Ron Decar paid $2.7 million on Dec. 31 to purchase a building and parking on two sides of his property from Super 8 owner Ilan Gorodezki. Decar had feared that because he was surrounded on three sides, the Viva Las Vegas chapel would eventually be choked out of business by a new hotel sketched out by Gorodezki.

As the final piece, Decar will add a Super 8 sign on the chapel's street sign. In one of the battles between the two sides, Decar opposed in front of the city planning commission Super 8's plan to build a separate sign, contending it would block the view of the chapel's sign.

"Both sides realized, for better or worse, that the only people really benefiting from the litigation were Lewis and Roca and Brooks Bauer," said attorney Michael Brooks, referring to the law firms for Viva Las Vegas and Super 8 respectively. "They took a little break from the litigation and figured out how to make it work."

"We will work together with (Viva Las Vegas) to make sure nobody parks where they are not supposed to park," said Zohar Robin, Super 8's operations director. "We are not after anybody. There is enough parking to share."

Decar declined to comment on the settlement. However, he has already started gutting part of the building he purchased on the north side of the chapel to convert it into a 300-seat reception and banquet room.

The rest of the building has been leased to the Ocha Thai-Chinese restaurant.

In a much smaller investment, Super 8 opened a small package-liquor store in its lobby on Dec. 31, making it perhaps the only one of more than 2,000 properties in the North American franchise system with the amenity.

Once a wing of the old Thunderbird hotel, Super 8 was purchased by Gorodezki out of foreclosure in late 2010 after years of neglect. The drug and sex traffic had become so chronic that city officials had previouosly declared it a public nuisance.

Viva Las Vegas had offered to lease the property from Gorodezki, but he declined and decided instead to renovate it into a hotel.

Decar opened Viva Las Vegas in 1999.

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at
toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.