Las Vegas man works to get street named after Sammy Davis Jr.

Who can take Industrial Road, sprinkle it with dew, turn it into Sammy Davis Jr. Drive, and create a miracle or two?

The Candy Man can, that's who.

In this case, the Candy Man is Josh Elliott, a 59-year-old Las Vegas native who has been on a one-man quest to name a two-mile stretch of Industrial Road after Sammy Davis Jr., that famous singer and dancer who became synonymous with Las Vegas and who died at the age of 64 in 1990.

If Elliott succeeds, it would fill an obvious void in a city that already has Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin drives, two of the more famous Rat Pack members.

It would also join a long list of streets that have been named after entertainers who made Las Vegas famous - or is it the other way around? - among them Jimmy Durante Boulevard, Debbie Reynolds Drive, Mel Torme Way, Wayne Newton Boulevard and Elvis Presley Court.

And if there's anybody up to the latest task, it's Elliot. He's no novice. He was instrumental, he said, in bringing Martin Luther King Boulevard to Las Vegas in the late 1980s.

Except in Elliott's latest endeavor there's just one problem, and it's not with the Clark County Planning Commission. Commissioners signed off on the deal in September 2011. No, it's raising at least $20,000 to help offset the costs of the nearly 100 businesses that would be forced to change their addresses on their stationery, business cards, web sites, invoices - and the list goes on.

ALL HE NEEDS IS MONEY

Elliott is a walking fundraiser in a power suit these days. He has been hitting the casinos off the Strip, hoping to persuade them to hold benefit concerts, especially Caesars Palace and The Venetian, a pair of the Rat Pack's favorites, although The Venetian was called the Sands back in those days.

Time is running out, too.

He has got nine months and a bit of change to come up with the cash. He already has opened an escrow account at Wells Fargo, a requirement by the Planning Commission when it gave Elliott two years to seal the deal, waiving the normal 60 days.

So far he has got zilch.

"It's all going to work out; I just know it," said an optimistic Elliott, a 1971 graduate of Western High School and an accountant by trade. "There are just too many people out there who love Sammy and love what he's done for entertainment in Las Vegas.

"If there's anybody who deserves this, it's Sammy. And there's no better way to honor somebody than to name something after him."

THE PERFECT SPOT

What better place, Elliott said, than to change the name of Industrial Road where it starts at Twain Street, right where Dean Martin Drive ends.

And it just so happens that Frank Sinatra Drive is only a block away - next to Interstate 15.

It's an intersection that sits in the shadows of Caesars Palace and where the names of the two great entertainers merge.

If Sammy Davis Jr. Drive were created, it would be a sort of reunion for the Rat Pack, that famous group of singers whose second home in their heyday, the early 1960s, was Las Vegas.

One big difference among the three is that Sammy was black; and though the audience loved him, he still had to sleep on the city's west side because of segregation. He also wasn't allowed to gamble in the casinos where he performed - or dine there.

Yet he was the first black performer to have his name up in lights on marquees on the Strip, according to Mark Hall-Patton, a historian first and administrator of the Clark County Museum.

Sammy also is famous for some of his quips, which often were self-deprecating, including the time he was asked what his handicap was in golf. To which he responded: "Talk about handicap - I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew." He lost his eye in an automobile accident, and he adopted the Jewish faith after the accident.

The street that would get his name is full of strip joints and is in the more industrial part of Las Vegas.

But to Elliott, the state of the street doesn't matter.

"This is Vegas," he said. "Things change every seven years, in a major way, too. I keep telling my son to just wait and watch, that 20 years from now he'll be driving down Sammy Davis Jr. Drive, and he won't even recognize the surroundings."

BUSINESSES VOICE CONCERNS

Back on that very stretch of street this week, few business owners were even aware of the plan to change the name.

"Sammy Who?" asked Anderson Voss, a Brazilian native who has owned Century Auto Body in the 2200 block of Industrial since 2007. "I'm not sure whether I want the name changed or not. I'll have to see how it's going to affect me."

The problem is, the business owners at this point don't have any choice in the matter. What choice they had would have had to come before the Planning Commission's approval on Sept. 6, 2011, not after the fact, Elliott said.

"I don't think it's going to give us more business, regardless of the name," said Harold "Hertz" Westrup, the owner of Hertz Auto Repair, in business for two years. "But I'll make a deal: We'll change the name if there's some way we can get some of the fortune from Sammy's estate."

All joking aside, at J.A. Tiberti Construction, a few employees said the name change would be a significant maneuver in the history of their company, seeing as its founder, J.A. Tiberti, named Industrial Road in the early 1950s as soon as he opened shop.

"It's going to be interesting to see what happens," said Janice Thielke, an employee there. "I don't understand why they just didn't carry Dean Martin Drive straight this way, but I get it. We're in the city here. When they put in Dean Martin Drive, they wanted to make it upscale."

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.