The strippers at Wendover’s Southern X-posure will be throwing in their G-strings come March 2016 said owner Scott Bangerter last week.
“I could keep it open but only as a bar,” Bangerter said in an interview last week. Also the owner of the the Plaza Shopping center where Southern X-posure strip club is the Plaza’s anchor tenant
Southern X-posure has officially about six left to stay in the Plaza. But without the exotic dancers raking in the cash Wendover only food bank and senior center that could face closure if the club is forced to leave.
Nine and a half 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 March 2016.
There have been four 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.
But Bangerter’s support 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 iat the time, “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 was 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.
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 4,000.
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.