Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Ownership changes, but strip club drama for Club Paradise remains

Club Para

John Katsilometes

The marquee for Club Paradise on Paradise Road, across from the Hard Rock Hotel, shown on Monday, Jan. 5, 2015. The club is reopening under new owner Steve Paik of Philadelphia.

Updated Sunday, March 29, 2015 | 11 a.m.

Suffice it to say success for the recently relaunched Club Paradise was not quite a lead-pipe cinch. But a lead pipe has been put in play, and not by Professor Plum in the conservatory.

Instead, it was by a club promoter in the parking lot.

This incident unraveled early the morning of March 15, a Sunday, at the gentlemen’s club across from Hard Rock Hotel on Paradise Road. One of the nightspot’s managers was attempting to chase a promoter and the promoter’s buddies from the club, as the group was hanging out until after 8 a.m., long past closing hours. The promoter was a representative of one of the companies that Club Paradise operator Steve Paik has been using to deliver business to the venue.

Well, the promoter and the manager got into a verbal back-and-forth and even a brief shoving match before the promoter skulked out through the rear entrance. When the manager himself walked out several minutes later, the promoter was holding a lead pipe or tire iron or some sort of multi-use tool you’d find at a hardware or auto parts store.

Click to enlarge photo

Club Paradise, on Paradise Road across from the Hard Rock Hotel, reopened under new owner Steve Paik of Philadelphia.

There was no actual fistfight in this board game come to life, but the tension underscores the drama that has befallen the club since it reopened in January under Paik’s watch.

The management team has been dismissed — including the staffer involved in the lead pipe incident, who is considering a lawsuit alleging a hostile work environment. Multiple sources familiar with Club Paradise operations have reported credit-card complaints from inside the nightclub during opening weekend in January (one tourist from Canada wound up with charges exceeding $20,000, which prompted an angry call to the club by the man’s wife claiming he was wrongfully charged). Club Paradise has a long history of credit-card fraud complaints, and was the reason the business was raided by the IRS back in June, which led to its closing for the last six months of 2014 before Paik arrived as the new operator.

Those same sources also report that Paik still owes former owner Sam Cecola several hundred thousand dollars, though Paik has agreed to make payments to Cecola. That might explain why Cecola, who owned the business until selling to Paik in January after the IRS showed up on property, has been spotted moving freely inside a club he no longer owns. Cecola splits his time between Chicago and Las Vegas, and has been taking a keen interest in the reopening of Club Paradise.

Click to enlarge photo

The interior of Club Paradise on Paradise Road, across from the Hard Rock Hotel, on Monday, Jan. 5, 2015. The club is reopening under new owner Steve Paik of Philadelphia.

Cecola’s recent involvement in the club has raised some eyebrows. He was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison back in 1997 for defrauding the IRS and filing false income tax returns, and is not permitted to hold a liquor or business license. Yet Cecola continues to make his presence felt at the business. When Paik was prepping for opening weekend in January, Cecola was working inside the space, saying he was working on a press release listing all of the famous entertainment figures and athletes who had visited the club when he ran the place.

Also, intrigue at the club has been heightened by the arrival of Dennis DeGori, who operates the gentlemen’s clubs Scores in Chicago and Club Eleven in Miami. Within the past month he has reportedly met with both Paik and Cecola at the business.

DeGori has a history of nightclub management in Las Vegas dating at least to the late 1990s — including at Club Paradise, which he ran under Cecola’s ownership for six years ending in 2003. DeGori then bought the club Jaguars from Jack Galardi, turning it into Las Vegas’ Scores outpost (which then turned into Rick’s Cabaret and is now House Showclub).

DeGori’s presence at the club has to be taken as more than a mere social call. How he’s actually involved is, so far, the great unknown. But the lineup continues to change at Club Paradise, where the only constant has been drama, strife and the occasional use of props in the parking lot.

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