Troubled Tropicana Cinemas closes for good

Las Vegas' only discount theater has played its last picture show.

USA Cinemas Tropicana Cinemas, located at Tropicana Avenue and Pecos Road, shut down and sold its seats -- five theater chairs for $100 -- over the weekend.

Theater operator John Bentley said he couldn't come to terms with the property's landlord regarding the theater's rent.

The theater also had licensing problems with county officials regarding live shows, he said. (Police shut down one such hip-hop show in April.)

"It wasn't worth our while" to continue to operate the theater without the live show option, Bentley said in a telephone interview.

The landlord plans to transform the theater space into a banquet hall, according to Bentley.

This latest, and final, chapter in the Tropicana Cinemas' troubled history -- which began its existence in the mid-'80s as the six-screen Paradise Cinemas and included stints as an art-house theater, a discount theater and a Spanish-language theater -- lasted a little more than a year. The previous operator ran the theater from November 2005 to mid-March of 2007.