Airport coffee shop shut down after failing to qualify as disadvantaged business

Officials at McCarran International Airport have made good on a promise to close down the Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee Shop for failing to qualify under a federal program to aid minorities and women.

Aviation Director Randy Walker said Thursday he told Host Marriott, the leaseholder and concession manager for food and beverage concessions at McCarran, that its lease with McCarran was in jeopardy for letting the Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee Shop continue to operate.

Host Marriott, in turn, evicted Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee owner Gary Naseef from his nook in the airport's main rotunda. Naseef has filed a lawsuit challenging the eviction, leaving a plan to sign over his location to a qualified disadvantaged business in limbo.

"We had given them what we felt was a reasonable opportunity to get certified, probably more than reasonable," Walker said. "Once we felt we'd given that reasonable opportunity and felt they weren't going to get certified, then we gave Marriott notification they were in default with us."

Host Marriott leases space from McCarran and subleases that space to independent concessionaires. Under the terms of its lease with McCarran, at least 20 percent of Host Marriott's gross revenue must be generated by operators of disadvantaged businesses, Walker said.

Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee and Naseef, who was a childhood friend of Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, were the subjects of a Sun story last November. The story prompted an ethics complaint that was dismissed because Woodbury had abstained from the vote to grant Naseef a lease.

The state Ethics Commission is holding hearings next week on whether three other county commissioners should have disclosed their relationships or abstained from voting on giving similar leases to acquaintances of theirs.

Naseef and then-wife Jacqueline Turner were granted a lease in September 1995 under the airport's disadvantaged-businesses program.

Because Turner is black, the couple thought they would meet the federal requirements to certify. But airport officials had trouble proving that Turner was a 51 percent owner, a critical condition for qualifying.

A year after the county had granted the lease, Naseef and Turner were no closer to qualifying. Nonetheless, airport officials ordered Host Marriott to let Turner and Naseef open for business, even though they still had not met the federal certification requirements.

During their first year of operation, they grossed $581,000.

After they opened the kiosk, Turner and Naseef divorced and she was voted out of the company, jeopardizing Naseef's chances for meeting the federal qualifications. The airport gave Naseef several months to find new investors and qualify or face eviction.

Finally, in April, the airport notified Host Marriott that its lease was in jeopardy because of Naseef, Walker said.

Host Marriott then was required to devise a plan to reach the 20 percent goal, Walker said. The plan was to give the Naseef location, and a second location that would have been available had Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee been certified, to an operator of a qualified disadvantaged business, Walker said.

"The problem, of course, is they (Host Marriott) are still in litigation with Las Vegas Gourmet Coffee," Walker said.

Mike Hasenzahl, vice president of airport operations for Host Marriott, said that all the equipment has been pulled out of one location and that the company was in court trying to defend its eviction and make it permanent.

Hasenzahl did not want to comment further.

"There is so much going on ... I just don't want to comment," Hasenzahl said. "With the Ethics Commission coming up, lawyers going to court, there is too much going on to fight that in the newspapers. They are out. That's all I can say."

Hasenzahl was busy Thursday trying to get his concessions ready for the opening of the new D gates terminal at McCarran. How concession leases for disadvantaged businesses at those gates were awarded is the focus of a state Ethics Commission hearing scheduled for Wednesday through June 27.

Allegations of cronyism have been made against commissioners Yvonne Atkinson Gates, Myrna Williams and Lance Malone for voting last August to give concession leases to their friends and associates, which will be the subject of next week's ethics hearings.

Hasenzahl is scheduled to testify at the hearings about Host Marriott's role in picking the companies recommended to the County Commission.

"All those people who won concessions are going to open," Hasenzahl said. "There's no change there."

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