Hotel will go up at topless club site

A shopping center that housed a topless dancing club and an X-rated bookstore will make way for a 280-suite nongaming hotel.

Candlewood Hotel Co. Inc., Wichita, Kan., has acquired 4.4 acres at 4034 S. Paradise Road for $5.2 million and will build a four-story Candlewood Suites hotel.

Candlewood is geared to serve extended-stay value-conscious guests at rates usually lower than $50 a night.

"When I was asked if we wanted to come to Las Vegas, I said I would only do it if I could get a triple-A site," said Jack DeBoer, chairman and chief executive officer of Candlewood. "I think this location meets that criterion."

The shopping center, due to be demolished as early as this week, was anchored by the Crazy Horse Saloon and also was home to the Empire Book Store. It is across the street from the Howard Hughes Center, a business park with its own restaurant row, and within a five-minute drive of the Strip and McCarran International Airport.

The deal was negotiated by George Connor and Grant Traub of Colliers International, who represented Candlewood and the property's seller, Dorothy Sansome, who leased the 31,000-square-foot shopping center.

DeBoer, who built the Residence Inn across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center, then sold the entire chain to the Marriott Hotels group, said the Las Vegas Candlewood will be about twice as large as most of the hotels in the chain to justify paying the high price of the property.

"People said, 'Holy smoke, why are you going into a city that is adding 15,000 hotel rooms this year?' but I think we have a different product," DeBoer said. "Our whole mantra is to deliver exceptional value with the highest quality room of anybody in our category."

That includes 25-inch television sets, CD players and two telephone lines per room to accommodate voice and computer transmissions. The Las Vegas Candlewood will be one of the first to use in-room touchscreen computers for simple transactions.

The company also offers the "Candlewood Cupboard," an honor-system supply of groceries that guests charge to their own rooms when they take anything. The use of washers and dryers is free, soft drinks cost a quarter and long-distance rates through the hotel are 25 cents a minute.

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