Water bill surcharge sinks struggling saloon

It has all the makings of a pretty good country song: An old honky-tonk that's been limping along for years is finally finished off by one last bill from the government.

Call it "The Ballad of Larry's Hideaway."

The trustee for the dance hall and saloon near Rancho Drive and Cheyenne Avenue said he decided to close the struggling business for good after he opened his latest water bill and discovered a new line item: $404.08 a month to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for something called an infrastructure surcharge.

"That was the final straw," said Brent Howard, who manages the trust that owns Larry's Hideaway. "It's not the $404; it's when you add the $404 to everything else. There comes a point when you say enough's enough."

Unless he can find a buyer to take the place off his hands, Howard said the clack of billiard balls and the scooting of boots will end June 30. "We're going to board it up."

Larry's Hideaway and its namesake have been a fixture at the western edge of North Las Vegas for decades.

Larry Lapenta opened a gourmet restaurant called Larry's Old Ranch House on the property in 1962. He converted it to the Hideaway in 1998 because he wanted a place where he could dance with women, Howard said.

Lapenta was also the man behind another long-lived local haunt. In 1972, he opened Larry's Villa, a no-frills topless club at Rancho and Bonanza Road.

Howard is now the trustee for that too. After years as Lapenta's accountant, he was put in charge of the businesses after his boss died in 2006 at the age of 84.

Howard said the Villa will stay open even if the Hideaway doesn't.

Howard's wife, Lisa, has managed the saloon and dance hall for the past four years, a job that involves everything from maintaining bar-top slot machines to some light general contracting. Two of her nieces also work there.

"It hurts to take it all away," Lisa said, her eyes filling with tears. "It breaks my heart. But we got to do what we got to do."

The Howards broke the bad news to their 15 employees a few weeks ago but told them not to tell anyone in case the place finds a new owner and stays open.

Customer Margie Bumgarner first learned about the possible closure from a reporter on Friday afternoon.

"You've got to be kidding me," the 78-year-old said as she punched buttons on a video poker machine. "This is my local place. I don't go anywhere else."

Bumgarner said she has been visiting Larry's Hideaway about once a week for five or six years because people there know her and she knows them.

Anita Pack, Lisa's niece and bartender, smiled and nodded as she heard that.

"People who come here have been coming here a long time," she said.

But the Hideaway can't survive on a few regulars alone.

Lisa said the country dance hall business has gotten a lot more competitive in recent years, so they shifted the focus to gambling for a while and then tried to reinvent the place as a pool hall. They brought the dancing back late last year, but they still cater to billiard leagues.

Howard said business really dropped off when the economy tanked, but expenses just keep climbing. It seems like almost every bill the business gets lately includes a rate increase or a new charge, he said.

"Everybody has got their hand out. What's the little guy supposed to do?"

The water bill shot up almost entirely because of a single fire line that feeds the sprinkler system at Larry's Hideaway. The sprinklers are required by code, so there is nothing the business can do to avoid the water authority's new surcharge.

"They can't just keep adding all these things for us to do," said Howard, who also owns a bookkeeping business and has run unsuccessfully for a variety of elected offices. "They're feeing us to death."

The water authority declined to comment about the situation at Larry's Hideaway, but officials for the agency have acknowledged that businesses are bearing the brunt of the new surcharge.

Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy has said that was done to lessen the burden on residential water users already struggling to make ends meet in a community that leads the nation in both unemployment and home foreclosures.

Single family homes account for more than 92 percent of all the water hook-ups in the authority's service area.

The water authority created the in­frastructure surcharge to help pay down roughly $2.5 billion in construction debt and finish funding an $800 million intake being built to keep water flowing to the valley even if Lake Mead continues to shrink.

Such work used to be funded with connection charges paid by new homes and commercial buildings, but that revenue stream evaporated when the economy tanked and growth stopped.

The surcharge is slated to remain in place for the next three years.

In the coming months, the water authority will convene a citizens advisory committee to review the new fee as part of a broader look at the agency's overall strategy and funding formula.

In the meantime, the push is on to turn "The Ballad of Larry's Hideaway" into a song of redemption.

Frank Rebelo, who spins records at the dance hall under the name DJ Sinner, said he is trying to round up some investors to buy the place before the end of the month.

Howard warned him that he might be biting off more than he can chew, Rebelo said, but he just doesn't want to see a place with so much history killed off by the water bill.

"It's a real sad deal," he said.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.