Thursday, March 27, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Giovanni Herrera didn't have some deep meaning behind the choice of the name Presidio for his new rehearsal studio.
In fact, its roots were entirely mundane. "We're on Presidio Street," shrugged Herrera. "We just couldn't come up with a good name."
But Presidio, which means "fortress" in Spanish, has turned out to be the perfect label for the high-security facility he had in mind.
"We're going to have 24-hour monitored security cameras in all the practice rooms," he said, stepping over tarps and paint cans to give a sneak-preview tour a few days shy of last Saturday's opening-night party. "Members will have to show an ID to get buzzed in.
"Some other practice areas have theft, drugs and alcohol. They make it hard for people trying to do something with their music to get what they paid for," he explained. "We wanted to set the standard. We wanted to build something that, if we were musicans, this is what we would want, what we would expect."
"We want a place that's all professional -- not necessarily the way they play," added Herrera's younger brother, Kenny, "but their attitude."
Looming only a few doors down warehouse-dotted Highland Drive is the now-defunct rehearsal site Noiz Factory, which Giovanni, 27, and Kenny, 18, were helping to run only a few months ago. Now, it serves as a reminder of what can go wrong.
"That place was a dive," Kenny freely admitted. "But it made good money. We're charging the same price for what we have here -- which is 20 times better."
They rapsodized about the "floating" second floor and stairwell, which Kenny, the sound technician, says should eliminate the dreaded "low-frequency rumble," while Giovanni pointed out the planned retail shop, which will sell guitar stings and picks and "stuff you can't get in the middle of the night" when catastrophe strikes.
Everything, Giovanni grumbled, was more expensive than expected. That includes wiring extra power for the amps, insuring the expensive sound system, padding the floors to make the rooms "sound isolated," and installing handicapped bathrooms up to city codes.
Herrera, his partner, Tom Mahn, and their out-of-town investor have sunk a quarter of a million dollars into renovating this 8,000-square-foot facility, a former nuts-and-bolts factory at 2722 S. Highland Drive.
It was worth it, judging by the raves of Gerry Proctor, drummer of the Vermin, a punk-roots band that was renting a space to rehearse for a gig the following night.
"The facility is the best, bar none, in Vegas -- even by California standards," he said.
"You don't have to worry about people breaking in and taking your stuff," he said, referring to the time a $700 bass was stolen from a fellow band member at another site.
The rental spaces he's used in the past weren't noted for their decorum. "People weren't courteous," he complained. "One band wouldn't stop playing so we could record a quick vocal line. We got in a fight with them out in the hallway. If that happened here, everybody would be out."
Herrera has already turned away some potential customers who had obviously just finished getting high or had "too much of the party attitude."
"You get one chance to come in here and prove yourself," Kenny said. "Safety is the big thing -- no drugs or alcohol. Either you blow it or you do good. Other places, there's people drinking beer in the rooms. That's cool for them, but for us here, we just can't have it. We can't be in every place all the time.
"We can sacrifice losing one customer over having this customer lose us other customers."
Even before it was officially opened, Presidio had already reserved about half its rooms, which will go for $335-$400 a month and $17 an hour.
Joe Vincent is lead guitarist for New York Express, one of the bands that has signed up to rent a monthly room; it also played at the opening-night festivities. "Even though a lot of them are rat holes, they're all booked up," he said. "This is going to be one of the best in town."
But Herrera hopes to lure not only local bands out of their garages, but professional recording artists out of Hollywood and New York.
Next up: They are seeking investors to add a recording studio to the site.
"The allure of Las Vegas makes it a great place for bigger labels to send down their bands to record demos or recordings for a week or a month," he said. "We're trying to pull in money from other places and sink it in here."
archive
