Maybe the sign was an omen. A year after Studio City, California-based SASCO Property Management bought and refurbished the notorious Vista Arms in June (renaming it Bingo Suites), a sign was hung on a fence announcing that the property's parking lot could accommodate vehicle overflow from the Las Vegas Convention Center's adjacent South Hall.
Most residents probably didn't think much of the sign, coming as it did on the heels of a much-needed spruce-up to the crime-saturated, 132-unit property. It certainly didn't send up any red flags for Joy Jett, who welcomed SASCO's plans to uproot the drug dealers and troublemakers who'd turned the complex on Swenson and Sierra Vista into a daily episode of Cops. One of the 18-year-old property's original tenants, she'd seen Vista Arms go from decent to bad to a quality of life just above Chechnya's. A June 5 posting on ratelasvegas.com conveys the general lawlessness: "There are at least 10 to 15 drug dealers selling drugs in the parking lot at all times. There are many fights and shootings there daily. Not a place for children at all. The stairways and elevator always smell like piss from all the drunk homeless people that hang out there 24 hours a day."
So when the haggard building got a paint job (from aqua to earthen brown) and upgraded rooms, Jett was happy. She was even more so when owners put a bulls-eye on the criminals. Pay phones used to orchestrate drug deals were removed. The shrubbery used by drug dealers to stash their stashes, addicts to dump their syringes and prostitutes to lob their condoms got cut. More and better lighting was installed. Known troublemakers received three- and five-day notices to shape up or get out.
But now, five months later, Jett says SASCO has become the problem. A year after purchasing the property for $6.2 million, SASCO sold it to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for $10.15 million, a nearly $4 million windfall. The prettifying was done, Jett claims, to fetch more coin from the LVCVA, which wants to expand along the western portion of Sierra Vista. Getting the money meant SASCO had to boot tenants, doing so, Jett alleges, by any means necessary. She refused to go, holding up the deed transfer. One woman against a capitalist machine.
"Ownership tried to clear out everyone, labeling us hookers, pimps, drug dealers. I'm a transsexual female, and they assumed I was a hooker," Jett says. "This company is not helping the community; it's throwing folks out on the street. I understood that the remodeling was done via federal loans and that whether they kept it or sold it, it would have to remain low-income housing for at leave five years, but I can't prove this."
Jett says this is a sad ending to what could've been a great story. SASCO had the makings of a good owner (the company, which has six local properties, has a history of buying and refurbishing distressed properties in Southern California). "We had five good months," she says.
The denouement began in August, Jett says, as residents learned of the LVCVA sale. She says management used hook and crook to get residents to leave, blaming "the county" for bullying. The LVCVA is a private entity, funded primarily by hotel and motel room taxes.
First came the hook: Tenants were offered discounts to move into other SASCO properties. This was followed by the alleged crook: People claiming they were constables threatened to kick tenants out. "Hookers and drug dealers have rights, even though I don't prefer to live next to them," Jett says.
To get her to move out, she says SASCO construction and maintenance staff purposely pounded on the walls at all times of the night and threatened to tell cops she was a hooker. "I told ownership that if they pushed me out, I would file a lawsuit."
Most residents departed. Jett didn't. She says LVCVA lawyer Luke Parsching told her that, so long as she stayed, the deed wouldn't change hands. Contacted by the Weekly, Parsching referred questions to SASCO and to LVCVA flacks. LVCVA spokeswoman Erica Yowell says this is the first she'd heard of the bullying claims: "I can't speak to them." As for the Bingo Suites purchase, she says, it was outlined in a five-year master plan presented in March 2004, four months before SASCO bought the property.
"It's a vision plan that looks ahead to our goal of 43 million visitors by 2009 and the enhancements and improvements we need to make in the interim," Yowell says. "We're set to add 20,000 hotel rooms in the next five years. We want to maintain current occupancy levels and to attract new customers because our competitors are nipping at our heels. Improving passenger vehicle and truck access to the South Hall, adding more parking, improving attendee ingress and egress to the facility and adding additional outdoor exhibition space will help us compete."
Minutes from the LVCVA's September 13 meeting note that the board adopted a revised master plan on March 8, 2005: "One of the recommendations of the master plan was to acquire contiguous real property that will provide passenger vehicle and truck circulation, additional customer parking, outdoor exhibit space and event attendee ingress/egress to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center and possible future Las Vegas Convention Center expansion. The property at 750 Sierra Vista Drive is approximately 2.13 acres and is directly adjacent to the South Hall and will provide substantial support for the South Hall. This property is very important to the implementation of the master plan and close proximity to the South Hall."
What may look like overt profiteering on its face isn't, says SASCO Regional Manager Judy Perez. She frames the sale as a business decision, pure and simple: The company couldn't charge high-enough rents; the monthly note hovered at $499 monthly for a year. According to economic research firm Applied Analysis, the northeast part of town had the lowest average for monthly rent at the end of last year, $723; the southwest's $915 was the highest.
Judging by those numbers and the outsize prices coveted land can fetch in the Valley, who wouldn't sell?
Though the LVCVA had long made known its plan to buy the property, Perez says SASCO pumped $1 million into renovations—not the move of a company trying to hoard profits.
"We wouldn't have put that much money in the property if we were going to sell it. ... When the LVCVA keeps knocking on your door, you don't have a choice," she says. Perez denies residents were mistreated. Everyone received 30-day notices. Half got discounts to SASCO's other properties. SASCO even paid for U-Hauls. Only one tenant groused: "JJ."
"She refused to move. We bent over backward to move everyone."
By late last week, Jett had pushed the holdout thing as far as she could. She moved. But bitterness still remains.
Her problem was never with the LVCVA buying the property—such is life in a capitalist system. It was with SASCO's purported insensitivity: Booting folks, then criminalizing those who didn't want to go. "It was wrong."
As for the LVCVA, another prong in its five-year master plan, to be fully unveiled in February, came to light during its December 13 meeting: authorization of $10.87 million to buy a 76-unit property at 454 Sierra Vista Drive. The owner, San Diego's Craig Rubin, paid $6.25 million for it in April 2005. Eight months; a $4.62 million windfall—a good investment, you might say.