This election year could be a make or break for Wendover only strip club Southern X-posure.
With only one year to stay in the Plaza Shopping Center before he must move to West Wendover’s “adult entertainment” zone Scott Bangerter must decide whether to once again enter into local politics, move and perhaps shuttering the Plaza that he also owns.
Seven years ago after more than a decade of legal battles Bangerter and the city council entered into an agreement where the city would stop trying to zone the strip club out of business and that Bangerter would move at the end of 2014.
There have been three municipal elections since the agreement was signed and in each and every one of them the strip club owner has not been shy or ungenerous in supporting candidates for city office who would agree to amend the agreement to allow the dancers at Southern X-posure to keep on strutting their stuff.
While some strip club supported candidates have won, they have never been the majority on the council and this year will be the last chance to change that balance for Bangerter.
But Bangerter’s support especially in the last election also became a campaign issue in and of itself and may have at least lead to the defeat of then incumbent Mayor Donnie Andersen to Emily Carter.
“Yeah I got hit on it,” Andersen said Wednesday, “But I wouldn’t change my position. I think it is hypocritical for a city in Nevada that lives off of casinos should try and close a strip club. Also I don’t think that without the strip club the Plaza would stay in business.”
Andersen is not alone in his assessment the previous owner of the Plaza, David Steven often said that without the strip club the property would not be viable under the then current economic conditions. That was ten years ago and if anything the business climate in West Wendover has worsened.
This year the number of West Wendover businesses fell to one of the lowest levels ever according to City Clerk Anna Bartlome.
All five of Wendover Casinos are considered local in the city’s new count even though their corporate headquarters are not located in Wendover. The same is true for West Wendover apartment complexes and for most of the fast food franchises.
Excluding those business from the list the number of locally owned and operated businesses falls below 60 in West Wendover an embarrassingly small number for a city with a population of about 5,000.
The dearth of private enterprise is most acute in the retail industry which apart from Smith’s Food Store is virtually nonexistent in West Wendover.
Purchases as simple as a computer printer ink, a telephone or even a coffee maker available literally in a half a dozen locations in communities of similar or even smaller sizes as Wendover, often necessitate a 240 mile round trip to Salt Lake City to the east or Elko to the west.
This long term down turn in retail business hit the Plaza Shopping Center particularly hard. Today there are but two retailers at the Plaza.
To fill up empty space, Bangerter has become something of a benefactor to not for profit charities. The largest tenant is the local thrift store/food bank and adjacent to that is the newly opened Senior Citizens’ Center both reportedly paying minimal rent.
If Bangerter is forced to move and shutter the Plaza now it could put the city council in a very uncomfortable political position.
It is one thing to shut down a strip club, a place of depravity, but it is quite another to close down the only charity in town that feeds the hungry and provides clothing to the needy or a senior center, even if they are the unintended consequences of getting rid of the strip club.
And those unintended consequences may be Bangerter’s ace in the whole even if he does support candidates in the coming elections.
In city meeting after city meeting Bangerter supporters have been strongly out numbered by strip club opponents. But with the poor and the elderly facing eviction the righteous anger against near naked woman dancing could be softened even from politicians who claim to be fighting for families.