More Business Closings
62 lose jobs as the Wild Horse Casino closes down
October 31, 2008
ANDREW WINEKE, THE GAZETTE
The worst year in history for Colorado casinos claimed its first victim Friday, when the Wild Horse Casino in Cripple Creek closed its doors, putting 62 employees out of work.
Revenues for casinos in Cripple Creek, along with Colorado’s other gaming towns, have fallen every month this year. In September, Cripple Creek gaming revenues fell 10.3 percent to $12.8 million compared to the same month in 2007, according to the state Division of Gaming. Statewide, gaming revenue was off 18.7 percent in September and 11.4 percent for the year to date.
Many casinos are counting on Amendment 50, which would raise stakes for table games and add new games, to turn around their fortunes. Wild Horse general manager Todd Fred said he thinks the amendment will pass but said it would be too late for his casino.
“Even if it passes, it won’t have an effect on us until July (2009),” Fred said. “We just weren’t able to wait until July.”
Casino owners blame the combination of the smoking ban, which was extended to casinos this year, the economy and high gas prices for the slowdown.
Other casino managers said the Wild Horse’s closing is sad, but it wasn’t a shock.
“It’s unfortunate, but the way the market has been it’s not surprising,” said Eric Rose, general manager of the Colorado Grande Casino. “They hadn’t been doing well for a while.”
“I think (the owners) just got fed up with losing money,” said David Minter, general manager of Johnny Nolon’s Casino.
Business at Cripple Creek casinos has been down less than at Black Hawk and Central City, but much of that is due to the opening of the new Wildwood Casino at the entrance of town, which has split a diminishing take between more slot machines than ever before.
The Wild Horse opened in 2004 and had 258 slot machines, according to the Division of Gaming.
The Wild Horse’s Web site said employees could pick up their final paycheck Friday night and that information for customers would be posted on the Web site, www.thewildhorsecasino.com, soon.
Op-Ed: Anti-tobacco lawmakers unresponsive to ban’s impact
By NORMAN E. KJONO
November 6, 2007
November 6, 2007
The Colorado Licensed Beverage Association and bar owners’ Coalition for Equal Rights hosted a joint conference in Idaho Springs from Oct. 26 to 28. Members of the Colorado Legislature, lobbyists and a director from the Colorado Department of Revenue attended. Several topics of importance to liquor store and tavern business owners, including enforcement and proposed legislation, were discussed. During the conference I presented a consulting report for CER members about the $30 million economic impact of the Colorado smoking ban on tavern licensees, which included statistics from the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Adverse impact of the current statewide smoking ban on bars and taverns was discussed with legislators during a roundtable session. Legislators responded with a challenge to bar and tavern owners by making it clear that, regardless of significant adverse economic impact, no legislative changes to the smoking ban would be sponsored or passed.
The above events cause concern in light of an October Harris/Wall Street Journal online survey. Thirtyseven percent of respondents said it was fair to ask people with unhealthy lifestyles to pay higher insurance premiums; 35 percent felt that some should pay higher co-payments or deductibles. In a June 2006 survey, 53 percent of respondents stated they thought it was fair for those with unhealthy lifestyles to pay higher insurance premiums, co-payments or deductibles. A healthy lifestyle was defined as those who don’t smoke, exercise frequently and control their weight. Public support for a core part of anti-tobacco and anti-obesity agendas has sharply declined over the past 17 months.
Waning public support for specialinterest health agendas occurs as the public becomes aware of program details, while targeted citizens and small business owners feel the increasing bite that an agenda imposes. Legislator positions such as those experienced by the Coalition for Equal Rights last weekend — effectively, hush up and endure — are unresponsive and insensitive.
The October Harris/WSJ survey confirms trends identified in 2006 California Field Polls data regarding a $2.1 billion per year cigarette tax ballot measure. Revenues would have been used to finance expansion of health care in that state, including emergency care for illegal immigrants. An August 2006 survey showed 63 percent supported the ballot measure. By October, public support declined to 45 percent. The California cigarette tax ballot measure failed 48 percent to 52 percent in November. Again, it becomes clear that support declines when voters begin to understand the details and consequences of special-interest agendas.
The above polling data should be of immediate concern to Colorado legislators because it fires a warning shot across the bow of politicians who apparently believe that the agenda comes first and its consequences can be ignored. The implicit message from some legislators — to the effect that small business owners presenting their legitimate concerns to elected representatives is perhaps just a bit uppity — is not acceptable.
Voters have moved well past the zenith of public support for legislation that targets one group with punitive costs and mandates to benefit a voter majority who presumably will elect program sponsors. Concerned voters are beginning to acknowledge both their interdependence and the value of preserving personal liberties. It appears to me that the public is completing an important civics lesson about the true meaning of democracy with considerably greater success than their elected representatives. It is apparent that the majority who are incorrectly assumed to support specialinterest legislation get it: the target that one allows to be painted on a neighbor’s back today will predictably result in cross hairs on one’s own posterior tomorrow. That applies equally to individual citizens and small business groups with diverse interests.
Casinos in Blackhawk and Cripple Creek are building outdoor pavilions to accommodate customers who smoke when the casino smoking ban becomes effective in January 2008. Tobacco control advocates are now declaring the pavilions to be illegal. The $30 million adverse impact of the smoking ban on bar and tavern revenues reported by the Coalition for Equal Rights provides a clear indicator of what the consequences of a smoking ban for casinos will be. Coalition economic impact data strongly suggest that the smoking ban’s impact on casino revenues may prove to be far greater than previously estimated.
It is one thing for legislators to pass a smoking ban when its economic impact is uncertain. Perhaps that is a naive mistake. Legislators persisting with support of special-interest smoking bans despite clear evidence of its substantial negative impact is another matter, however. Principal among concerns for small business owners is the question of legislators blindly pursuing a ban agenda, despite survey data that shows sharply waning public support and economic data that reveals strong adverse impact. At what point does such behavior by elected representatives become a statement that public opinion and negative impact for small business owners do not matter to legislators?
Having been presented with a challenge by legislators, Coalition for Equal Rights members and other small business groups rise to a higher commitment. Their legitimate interests will be heard; they will pursue administrative and legislative remedies. The most important service CER members can provide for all Colorado small business owners is to publicly respond to the challenge presented by addressing the important issue of all citizens’ right to meaningfully petition government.
Kjono is a financial consultant and columnist for Forces.org
Moore: Dwyer writing recipe for new theater
Former Country Dinner Playhouse producer hopes to be staging a musical again — somewhere — within two months.
By John Moore, The Denver Post Theater Critic
06/17/2007
06/17/2007
The demise of the Country Dinner Playhouse has many looking to former producer Paul Dwyer to fill the huge vacuum left behind by the closing of the state’s second-largest theater. And if he has anything to say about it, he will.
“We are in the process (of starting over),” said Dwyer. “The long-term goal is to have our own home, but I think within a couple months we will start producing shows.”
Tangedal’s plea
Former Theatre Group artistic director Steven Tangedal has issued his first statement since losing his Theatre On Broadway performance space under a mound of debt exceeding $25,000. Tangedal vowed to fight on to save the group’s remaining space, the Phoenix Theatre, on which it holds a $3,000 monthly mortgage.
Tangedal has long blamed his financial demise on the smoking ban’s casino exemption. TG relies on weekly Bingo games for most of its operational income, and proceeds dropped 80 percent after the ban. Tangedal is hoping the new inclusion of casinos effective Jan. 1 will bring Bingo customers back.
He urges anyone who wants TG to survive to simply come play Bingo. TG games are held at 10:30 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday evening at Bingo City, 3820 S. Federal Blvd.
“If the theater community at large wants us to survive, and is willing to help,” he said, “we will.”
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Up in smoke
June 5, 2007
By Lance Vaillancourt Colorado Daily Staff
By Lance Vaillancourt Colorado Daily Staff
So, a smoker with a lit cigarette walks into the bar. Well, not anymore – at least in Colorado. Are you saying, “Finally!” or, “Unconstitutional!” or, do you even care? Well, some do. And they are trying to change things.
To many non-smoking members of the Boulder community, the tobacco-free environments provided by anti-smoking legislation are received with open arms.
“I think it’s nice,” said local resident Mandy Danson. “I used to live in a town where people could smoke everywhere, so being able to go out without having to worry about stinky clothes and hair is a luxury.”
Other members of the community, however, contend that this luxury comes at a higher price than Boulder’s residents may realize.
“I know of at least one hundred local business owners who have either had to close or have attributed dramatic decreases in sales directly to anti-smoking legislation,” said Lisa Fender, junior vice president and spokesperson for the Coalition for Equal Rights (CER), a non-profit organization. “Winters are the worst because when customers have to stand outside in the cold to smoke, they either won’t stay out as long or won’t go out at all.”
According to Fender, the Coalition for Equal Rights was originally founded in response to fighting anti-smoking legislation several months before it was passed.
The non-profit organization is currently sponsored by over 500 businesses and individuals. Fender said these people are dedicated to continuing the fight for what they feel is an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of small business owners and their customers who smoke.
“Business owners should have the right to make their own decisions about being smoke-free,” said Fender. “Smoking is an easy target because it’s a nuisance, but health-wise there’s no difference between being around smokers and being around a campfire.”
Fender said one of the most important tasks of the Coalition for Equal Rights is to compile and organize information regarding allegations of the dangers of second-hand smoke that are reported by misleading anti-tobacco campaigns.
“We have over forty studies – including a major one by OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] – that debunk anti-smoking allegations of environmental tobacco smoke,” said Fender. “It’s an important issue because the only reason any of these bans are legal is through the ‘harmful to others’ clause in Fourteenth Amendment.”
Fender said anti-smoking ads do not account for the 400-plus indoor-air carcinogens that can be generated by any number of acceptable human activities such as spraying for insects or even frying chicken on a stove.
“Every activity has its risks,” said Fender. “At least smoke can be effectively ventilated. Bar-owners should be allowed to choose whether or not they want to risk losing customers not wanting to be around smoke.”
Fender said it is this line of thinking that propelled a number of area bars to start participating in a civil disobedience protest against anti-smoking legislations on February 21st of this year. According to the CER’s website, participating bar-owners were encouraged to allow indoor-smoking in spite of the new legislation in order to win back old customers and tie up courts by appealing resultant fines and tickets.
Fender said the Coalition for Equal Rights actively advises bars participating in the civil disobedience campaign, but does not support them financially.
Fender said, to date, there are still several bars participating in the protest throughout Colorado. And while the overall success of the protest is hard to gauge, one bar owner in Colorado Springs actually had his tickets thrown out for lack of evidence.
“The Judge said there wasn’t enough to uphold the charge” said Jim Von Feldt, owner of Billie’s in Denver, who was ticketed for allegedly allowing his customers to light up on the premises. “These laws really affect the mom ‘n’ pop places. I have a friend down the street that just had to close down because of it. That’s why I have to keep fighting it.”
It appears, however, that Colorado’s small business owners still have quite an uphill battle ahead of them if they are on the pro-smoking side of the argument. Recent legislation was just signed by Governor Ritter to ban smoking in casinos next, and Fender even described the situation of a couple in Golden who were legally ordered to stop smoking in their own town-home within the past year.
“We will continue to fight this” said Fender. “If they can take away smoking, who knows? Maybe trans fat will be next. Then maybe something else – until, finally, why do we even have a constitution?”
More Business Closings
December 19, 2006
EFFECTIVE SATURDAY, THE GOLDEN CUE IN STEAMBOAT WILL CLOSE DUE TO THE SMOKING BAN. This bar has been there some 30 years and was located in a trailer park. Since everyone had to go outside to smoke, the tenant’s in the park began to complain because of all the excess noise. The Trailer park would not renew the lease to the bar.
Mom and Pop taverns, and pubs are closing daily and this is yet one more to add to the ever growing list of closures caused by this seriously flawed law ( the clean indoor air act), many of these neighborhood pubs and taverns have been passed down to sons and daughters for generations. These privately owned and operated small businesses have provided owners and employees with a honest livelihood and retirement security and patrons with a place where they could meet and enjoy the fruits of their labor in the company of good hard working friends. You said you wanted to see proof of economic harm.. It shouldn’t be hard to find, it’s all around you.
Over thirty neighborhood pubs and taverns have closed since this ill-conceived and oppressive law was passed which denies’ people their right to free choice. Our recent statistical analysis places the average loss of business at 30%. No business can last long when faced with such loss and projections now indicate that many more of the still existing Pubs and Taverns will close within the next eight to ten months if something isn’t done to stop it. That would result in over three thousand employees and their children being forced into economic disaster resulting in irreparable harm. That is what has, and will continue to happen to hard working, tax paying people and their families and all for no good or justifiable reason. Would it not be easier on everyone just to allow people to freely choose what they want or don’t want to do, or do you really believe that people can not be trusted to decide how they want to live so therefore the government must decide for them.
That tyranny is exactly what our forefathers fled when they came to what they then called the new world, which we now call the United States of America. Have we forgotten why the Declaration of Independence was written and why so many have died defending the freedom it speaks to. Are not the rights and freedoms granted and guaranteed by The Constitution of the United States of America sacred to us? Why then do we allow them to be trifled with by those who think they know better how we should live our lives than we do? The truth is this law ,as it is presently written, is a prime example of a majority suppressing a minority and that, my fellow Americans, puts us just one short step away from the loss of all of our rights and freedoms and the creation of nothing less than a new tyranny. I will close this letter by giving you two thoughts from one of the greatest thinkers of our times and I ask that you really think about what they say.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Enacting a law not knowing it’s consequences is the folly of tyrants.
Shari Warren & Allen Campbell
Serving up memories
October 26, 2006
JIM BAINBRIDGE
JIM BAINBRIDGE
Co-owner Franny Nemeth Seeman is calling it “kind of a happy wake.” After 54 years of family ownership, Nemeth’s El Tejon Restaurant is closing Saturday, and as word has gotten out, a steady stream of customers has been going to 1005 S. Tejon St. for one last meal and to say goodbye.
Declining business and a sense of growing government intrusion convinced Seeman and her brother, Mike Nemeth, to call it quits.
“It breaks my heart,” Seeman said, in between greeting each of her Wednesday lunchtime customers by name. “There’s just going to be an emptiness . . . almost overwhelming. I grew up knowing many of these people. They are part of my life.”
Nemeth’s El Tejon was one of the region’s first Mexican restaurants, the first establishment to serve margaritas here, and it remains the oldest continuing familyrun restaurant in Colorado Springs until it hands off that distinction to Tejon Street neighbor Luigi’s when the doors close at 9 p.m. Saturday.
Over the years, Nemeth’s El Tejon has had celebrities Kenny Rogers, Doc Severinsen and Jose Greco stop by for meals. KKTV opened its first studio right next door. Mike Nemeth remembers meetings at the restaurant to discuss plans for building the Air Force Academy and later Colorado Springs World Arena.
In the late ’50s and early ’60s, Nemeth’s El Tejon was a favorite destination for academy cadets and their visiting parents, some of whom still return for reunions 40 years later.
But for all these historical touchstones, Nemeth’s El Tejon has always been about family. Walter and Francis Nemeth bought the restaurant — opened in 1946 as one of the city’s three drive-ins — in 1952. When Walter Nemeth retired in 1987, Franny Seeman and Mike Nemeth bought it from him and ran it just the same.
Waitress Myrna Favinger, who just marked her 50th year at the restaurant (“she retired once, for a week,” Seeman said), is at the top end of a veteran staff. Mike Nemeth reckons some of their customers are third or fourth generation.
“All the friends I’ve made, the social aspect, that’s the hardest part about closing,” Nemeth said.
The Nemeth siblings decided to close because they felt the dual pinch of government regulations and declining business.
Mike Nemeth cited the smoking ban, tax increases and a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot that, if passed, would mean an increase in the minimum wage as factors that have made doing business more difficult.
“You just get tired of dealing with that,” Nemeth said. “The other factor is financial. People don’t seek out local businesses as much now. They are comfortable staying at chain and franchise operations. One day you realize it doesn’t make sense. After so many years, it’s not worth it any more. We’re not making the money we were and it just keeps getting harder.”
Nemeth, Seeman and brother Wally Nemeth own the property and hope to sell to someone who will continue to operate a restaurant there.
The Nemeths are returning the game fish on the restaurant’s walls to their owners. The old matador outfits on display and the canvas murals commissioned from an artist in Mexico City will likely be auctioned on eBay.
All of this is emotional for Seeman, 59, and Nemeth, 57. They were just kids when their parents bought the restaurant. For awhile, they lived above the restaurant. They stood on soda boxes to help wash silverware as elementary school students, and it’s been their world ever since, through two expansions and untold thousands of cheese enchilada orders.
“My big concern,” Mike Nemeth said, “is where am I going to go. This is where I’ve always loved coming, the food I love.”
