Well-Worn Klondike Bid a Warm Farewell
28 June 2006
by Jennifer Robison
LAS VEGAS -- Paul Albert's love affair with the Klondike Inn began nearly a quarter century ago.
Albert moved to Las Vegas from New York in 1977, after his wife died.
He worked as a chef at the El Cortez for two years, and then moved over to the Las Vegas Country Club, where he put in three years. In 1982, a friend urged him to apply for a job cooking at the Klondike, at 5191 Las Vegas Blvd. South.
Albert, an only child who has no children of his own, has lived and worked at the property ever since.
"This is my family. I have no other family," Albert said. "(Owners) John and Ellen Woodrum and my customers became my family."
Albert sat inside the Klondike on Tuesday, watching that family slowly disperse as the hotel-casino's end drew near.
Gaming operations at the Klondike were scheduled to cease this morning at 6. The restaurant and 153-room hotel will remain open through Friday, when the entire property permanently closes its doors.
The Klondike's history stretches back to 1962, when it opened as a Motel 6.
Its location at the edge of town on then-U.S. Highway 91 made it a popular stopping point for tourists driving in from California.
John Woodrum and partner Katsumi Kazama bought the motel from Imperial Palace developer Ralph Engelstad for about $1.2 million in 1974. Two years later, Woodrum took control of the property. In 1978, he added a casino, restaurant, bar and lounge totaling 12,000 square feet. Woodrum held the Klondike until September, when he sold it to Royal Palm.
Woodrum said he's selling the Klondike partly because its property taxes have doubled in recent years as new developments such as Mandalay Bay opened in the area.
But more important to his decision to sell, Woodrum said, was an understanding that the Klondike couldn't keep up with its newer, flashier cousins.
"Progress is something that can be stifled and held up a little bit, but it can't be stopped," Woodrum said. "Progress is going to move on no matter what. I think we were standing in the way of progress."
Progress in the Klondike's case is a combination megaresort-condominium pro- ject.
Royal Palm Las Vegas bought the Klondike's 5.29 acres in September for about $24 million, according to records at the Clark County Assessor's office. Royal Palm also spent $42 million on a vacant, 5.25-acre site next door to the Klondike.
Royal Palm Las Vegas is part of Royal Palm Communities, a Florida company that has developed high-rise condominiums, hotels and business offices.
Dan Wade, president of Royal Palm subsidiary Paramount Worldwide Gaming, said it was too early to discuss the company's plans for its Las Vegas Boulevard parcels. But he did say the land would contain a "full-fledged" hotel-casino with condominiums.
With McCarran International Airport to the east, any plans for the parcels would face restrictions from the airport height overlay, said Chuck Pulsipher, a Clark County planning manager.
Pulsipher said the height limits range from approximately 70 feet, or seven stories, on the land's east side to about 150 feet, or 15 stories, on the west.
Woodrum, whose son, Michael, will maintain a small equity stake in the new project, said the development would have 1,200 condo-hotel units, a hotel with as many as 900 rooms and a casino with up to 90,000 square feet of space.
"It will be five-star," Woodrum said.
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the Klondike's closure represents more than the demise of a tired, timeworn Las Vegas throwback.
"This is about the decline of the mom and pop casino operation on the Strip," Schwartz said. "The Klondike is from an era when somebody could come to town and work their way up in a couple of casinos, put together a bankroll of $1 million, buy an operation and run it. Those days are pretty well over."
The Klondike also recalls a time when small civic gestures reigned along the city's resort corridor, Schwartz said.
He pointed as an example to the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada" sign near the front of the Klondike on Las Vegas Boulevard.
Today, the sign is an icon that annually draws thousands of camera-clutching visitors interested in capturing a bit of local posterity on film. In the mid-1970s, though, power service to the sign lapsed following an ownership dispute between municipalities. It was Woodrum who saw the landmark's value; he reconnected electricity to the sign and kept it running until negotiations restored responsibility for the sign to the county in 1976.
"That said (Woodrum) is a guy who cares about the community," Schwartz said. "Here's something people identify so intensely with Las Vegas. But 30 years ago, most people in the city were willing to just let it fade away. John Woodrum stepped up and brought attention to it. We're losing a little bit of that intimacy and involvement."
Michael Green, author of "Las Vegas: A Centennial History" and a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada, said the Klondike's passing takes a slice of old-guard Las Vegas with it.
Green frequented the Klondike with a former colleague who was staying at the hotel-casino about a decade ago.
"I got the feeling of an old-time joint," Green said. "There were cheap rooms, cheap and plentiful food and everyone knew your name. In that sense we lose a piece of the old-fashioned Las Vegas, when there was more of a feeling of personal friendliness. The town was smaller and the casinos were smaller. You didn't need a computer to know that Joe liked to bet $20 on 20 at the roulette wheel."
Patrons inside the busy casino on Tuesday spoke time and again of the Klondike's personal touches.
Wayne Henderson, a 17-year customer who financed a new patio at his Las Vegas home with $5,000 he won from the casino, said the pleasant service kept him and his wife, Dang, coming back up to three times a week.
"The first time we stopped in, people said, 'Hi, we've never seen you here before,'" Henderson said. "They got to know our names. We felt very comfortable. Nowhere else have I seen that caliber of friendliness. We're not going to find another place like this. It was people-friendly and the machines paid good. That's really what people are looking for."
Las Vegan Leon Graczyk has been a Klondike stalwart since he moved to Southern Nevada 14 years ago. As he played penny slots in the casino's waning hours, Graczyk wondered where he'd go next.
"I'll be lost without it," he said. "I like the place. It's like a neighborhood place. The waitresses are friendly and they know my name."
Klondike bartender Barbara Nauman, who's served drinks at the hotel-casino for more than 11 years, was sanguine despite the pending loss of her job.
"We're pretty fortunate. We've seen everything around us go down: the Hacienda, Vacation Village, the Glass Pool Inn," Nauman said. "We were lucky to hang on as long as we did. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe it was time for everybody to move on."
Nauman hasn't found a new bartending job yet. She delayed looking because she wanted to be there through the Klondike's bitter end "just to hang in there and say goodbye to everybody." She's spent her last few days swapping phone numbers with long-time customers.
Also filling up her address book Tuesday was Marilyn Sam, who has waited tables in the Klondike's restaurant for 12 years. Like most of the Klondike's remaining 45 employees -- down from a peak of 150 workers three months ago, before attrition began to take its toll -- Sam has accepted a job in the restaurant at Woodrum's other local property, the 15,000-square-foot Klondike Sunset Casino on Sunset Road near Boulder Highway in Henderson. There, she expects some longtime customers from the shuttered Klondike to stop by and see her.
"They assure me they'll be coming," she said. "That's what I'll miss most about working here -- the customers. You can't get that friendliness in a lot of bigger casinos Here, you can have fun with the customers and they can have fun with you. You can get closer to people."
Sam said regulars at the Klondike mostly included retirees, construction workers and young people on budgets. What they had in common, said Sam, was a preference for the intimacies of a smaller property.
Also moving over to the Klondike's Sunset incarnation is Paul Albert, the chef. At 85, he cooks only occasionally now, but he said the Woodrums have found him a place to live near the casino.
Not that he'd be lacking for a living situation: A good 20 customers have offered Albert rooms in their homes, he said. He's going to stick with the Woodrums, though, so he can be near the action -- and his relocated "family" -- at the Klondike Sunset.
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