Transcript of interview with Hank Gordon by Claytee D. White and Stefani Evans, October 26, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH HANK GORDON An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans and Vishe Y. Redmond Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv v PREFACE As we go about our days, running errands and getting things for our households, we often don’t think too much of the story behind the commercial real estate and retail stores we frequent. Only when those stores aren’t there and the neighborhood demographic changes do we embrace the nostalgia that goes into the story of the neighborhoods where we live and shop. Hank Gordon is the man behind those memories of those shopping centers we frequent not only in the Las Vegas Valley, but in Washington, Oregon, Montana, California and Alaska as well. Gordon was raised in Los Angeles and graduated from USC in 1956, when he went to work for a home builder in the San Fernando Valley selling his houses to make some extra weekend money. It was during this time he fell in love with real estate and had to break the news to his parents that he no longer was going to be a doctor. Feeling the urge of leadership he told his mentor that he didn’t want to sell houses–he wanted to develop homes instead. Shortly after that he bought a subdivision of lots in Van Nuys and started building 7–11 and Goodyear stores in the early 1960s. vi In this interview, Gordon talks about building his first shopping center in 1967 and moving to the Pacific Northwest. He moved to Las Vegas in 1988, when he bought 23 new national retailers to the Valley. He was responsible for bring Home Depot in 1999 and Costco and Best Buy to some of Las Vegas’s longest-standing shopping centers; Best of the Boulevard on Maryland Parkway and Best of the West on Rainbow Boulevard. He speaks of the changes to the market after the Great Recession, how retailers are having a hard time keeping afloat because of online shopping, and his days on the planning commission for the City of Las Vegas during the 1990s, when Jan Jones was mayor. It is without a doubt that Hank Gordon is one of the best in the business and there isn’t a lot of competition at the top.vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with October 26, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White and Stefani Evans Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Early years in LA; University of Southern California; real estate apprenticeship; Firestone Homes;7-11 and Goodyear stores; building in the Pacific Northwest; first shopping center in Las Vegas: 1988; Home Depot stores; planning commission years; Sunset and Marks; Best of the Boulevard and Best of the West………………………………………………………………1-10 BLM and county land; brick and mortar vs. the internet; changing neighborhood demographics; huge payoff in Anchorage……………………………………………………………………11-20 Issues with building commercial and retail in Vegas; origins of Laurich; Leid School of Real Estate board of directors; new growth in the Valley; Irwin Molasky………………………..21-31 1 S: Good morning. It is October 26, 2016 and it is Stefani Evans and Claytee White, and we are here in the offices of Hank Gordon at Laurich Properties. Mr. Gordon, would you please pronounce and spell your first and last names for the tape please. H-A-N-K, Hank. G-O-R-D-O-N, Gordon. S: Thank you so much. Why don't we begin by you telling us a little bit about your childhood, where you were born, what your parents did for a living, your siblings, and your childhood memories. I lived the first 40 years of my life in Los Angeles. My father manufactured women's sportswear. My mother was a housewife. I have an older sister that is five years older than me. I went to public schools until I went to college at the University of Southern California. I had no idea what I wanted to do. During my college days I decided that becoming a dentist was the direction I wanted to go. I took the prerequisite courses and applied to many dental schools. Unfortunately, I was only accepted to one dental school that was in Cleveland. That didn't sound very appealing. That summer after graduating from college, which was 1956, I went to work for a home builder in the San Fernando Valley, for the purpose of selling his houses, mostly on the weekends, to raise money to figure out what I was going to do and buy me some time during the summer. At that point I fell in love with the real estate business and announced to my parents that I was not going to become a doctor. My father got in bed, pulled the sheet over his head, laid down the lilies over the sheet, and said, "There goes my son the doctor." I didn't care because I was 21 years old, making really good money. At the time, I was making $2,000 a month selling houses in 1956, living at home, so I virtually had no expenses but having a good time. Except I couldn't party on Saturdays and Sundays because those were the days we sold houses. While all my friends were at Santa Monica Beach having a good time I was hustling houses. I didn't care about missing the 2 beach, because I was making money and learning. I then went to the home builder and said, "I don't want to sell houses; I want to start developing homes." S: You were still 21 years old? Yes, I was going on 22 at the time. He said, "Okay." I raised some money and found some land and bought it. He guided me through it and I sub-divided it into a dozen lots in Van Nuys. I built his plans, his houses on it and we shared in the profits. I was living in West Los Angeles and driving to the valley every day and kind of looked down my nose at the valley. You may have heard the expression about "valley girls." I then decided it was time for me to break away and do this on my own. I found three lots in Brentwood, which is a very nice area of Los Angeles, that were for sale. I put them into escrow and took my plans that I used in the valley and increased the quality of the homes. I went to Home Savings and Loan, which was the largest savings and loan in the United States at the time (when savings and loans were still around and making home loans). I met a gentleman there who made the loans. His name was A. Tofel Packett, who made me the loans. I asked him for $38,000 each. He said, "No, you want $50,000 loans because you plan to sell the houses for $60,000 or so." I said, "Okay, I guess I do." I didn't realize he was on commission. That is not done today, obviously. I got enough money to buy the land and build the buildings and be on my way. I continued to build single family dwellings in Brentwood and that area. C: Were these custom homes in Brentwood? No. They were custom quality, but they were spec homes. S: I wanted to ask the name of the builder you worked for. John Firestone. Firestone Homes. S: Any relation to Firestone Rubber? 3 No, not at all. I got a little tired of dealing with non-business women because my customers were all women who would come in and say, "I want this wall to be purple, this one green, and this one red." Two weeks later they would come back and say, "I changed my mind." A few years later, after building many homes, I said, "I can't take it anymore." I decided that if I started building apartments I wouldn't have to deal with women. Now I will deal with tenants. That went pretty well. I did meet a girl who worked in the construction loan department at Home Savings and Loan and married her. She is the mother of my children. She is no longer with us. That marriage lasted about ten years. That was one of the benefits of dealing with Home Savings, I guess. When I was building apartments I bumped into a friend who said, "You really should start getting into commercial. You don't have to deal with women who change their minds." I found a company called Speedy Mart, which subsequently became Seven Eleven. This is around the early 1960s. I started building Seven Eleven stores and Goodyear stores. They were easy to do. They didn't require a lot of money, front end money. S: Goodyear tires? Yes, Goodyear tire stores which had service in the back and they would sell tires and other accessories in the front. Then I had an opportunity to build my first shopping center in 1967, which was an A&P market in the City of Ventura. Most people don't know about The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, but they were the largest grocers in the world at the time. They had something like 8,000 grocery markets. Unfortunately, they were owned by two people, but one in particular who did not want to expand the size of the store to be competitive or to give the landlord a long enough lease, because he was always afraid if he went more than ten years, what would you do if the store is losing money, you can't get out of the lease. Now their competition started coming 4 in and doing 20–25 year leases. A&P was the last grocer you called on, after all of the other Los Angeles grocers for a New Deal. At that time there were nine credit worthy grocers in the Los Angeles area. Today there are probably three because they have merged. For example, Safeway and Vons merged and then both of them merged into Albertsons. Alpha Beta merged and was taken over by Ralph's, Ralph's was taken over by Kroeger, and so on. Now the developer doesn't have the ability to negotiate one grocer against another because in Las Vegas we really only have two traditional grocers left. One is Smith's, which is owned by Kroeger, and the other is Albertsons/Von, which is the same company now (Albertsons). The non-traditional grocer, like Whole Foods and Sprouts, are very selective and have a certain required customer base, as is Seafood City, a Filipino grocery chain. Our business has subsided a lot because when we find a good shopping center location we don't have six grocers we can call and say, "I would like to put there." Let me say there was one other traditional grocer, and that is the Walmart Neighborhood Market, but they haven't been active in a number of years here. I don't know if or when they are going to get back into the grocery business in Las Vegas. They have the super stores which are totally different than the grocery markets. The superstore is 200,000 square feet and the neighborhood markets are 40,000 square feet. After the 40 years in the Los Angeles area I had an opportunity to go to the Pacific Northwest, to Seattle and Portland, to develop a restaurant chain called Love's Barbecue. Dan Love asked me to go up there and do new stores for him. I was getting divorced at the time and I thought it was a good opportunity to get out of LA and into an area where I virtually had little competition. I worked that and then I got into building some K-Marts in Seattle. I moved to Bellevue, Washington, and spent the next 13 years there. 5 Subsequent to that I moved to Las Vegas in 1988 and built my first shopping center here, which is at Rainbow and Charleston. It had a Lucky grocery store and a Payless drug store. It is now an Albertsons and Home Depot and is still there. Payless is no longer there. Payless became Rite Aid and Rite Aid pulled out of the Las Vegas area a number of years ago. Like grocery markets, at one time we had five drug store chains here. We now have two, CVS and Walgreens. Before that there was Long's, Sav-on, and Rite Aid. You can see the direction our retail businesses are going. We just develop retail. We don't get into industrial, apartments, or office buildings, which is unfortunate now because so many of the retailers are losing out to the internet. There isn't as much demand for shopping centers. If you have a great piece of land and it would make a great shopping center, who would you call? There are very few retailers now that are making new deals. It has taken us a number of years to get the retailers back to the Las Vegas area, because during the recession they lost money here or they didn't make as much as they used to. We were able to bring 23 new national retailers to Las Vegas. I brought Home Depot here in 1999 with two stores. It was an easy selling job because Las Vegas' growth was skyrocketing and you had a story to tell. It is starting to be okay again, but not like the good old days when we developed without the internet competing with us. I have been here almost 30 years actively developing commercial, retail. We really don't have any significant competition based here. But we also don't have a lot of new deals going. We are going to start an Albertsons center at Hualapai and Deer Springs in the northwest pretty soon. That is the first Albertsons to be built in this area in nine years or more. Also, the Sprouts/CVS center we have under construction, just starting now, is at Farm and Durango, is the first grocery market to be built in the city of Las Vegas in maybe ten years, in the city, not the County. 6 We get a shot at the national retailers every year when our national convention is here in May for the ICSC, International Council of Shopping Centers. It is our trade association. It brings 50,000 people to Las Vegas. Everybody comes to it so we have one shot a year, minimum, to get somebody to go look at a site with us. Obviously if they are interested in expanding into Las Vegas they will send their real estate people here. At least we have one shot at them. How I got here was that I was having lunch with a couple of guys in Seattle and it was probably raining and I was getting tired of being in the rain. I was unmarried at the time. There was a 30 year window from when I was married before to my present marriage, so I was an active bachelor. One of the guys at lunch says, "I have a friend in Las Vegas who owns this piece of land that he thinks would be a good shopping center site. I am going to put you guys together.” This is 1988. I said, "Okay." His name was Clyde Turner. Clyde, at the time, was the Chief Financial Officer for Steve Wynn and his office was at the Golden Nugget. I didn't know him from Adam. I called him up to make an appointment. I think my friend set it up and I came down to see him. His property was at the northwest corner of Sahara and Rainbow, great shopping center site. I said, "Clyde you only have eight acres. Go get the adjoining ten acres and you will have a really great shopping center site." He listened to me and he did. Then we started negotiating our partnership agreement. I said, "Clyde, I love you. Let's just be friends. You are too tough." I had Steve Wynn's right hand financial guy negotiating with a young kid. As it turns out he lives across the fairway from me now in Queens Ridge. Small world. But what I did do, because I had Lucky and Payless in my back pocket, I went to the next intersection to the north, which is Rainbow and Charleston and ended up buying the land from the Lied Estate. I forget the executor's name right now. S: Christina Hixson? 7 Yes, Hixson, nice, nice lady. I think everybody else was trying to buy the land too, but her dog was sitting there with me and I said, "What a beautiful dog." That did it! S: The Oral History Research Center is housed in Lied Library at UNLV so we know the Lied Foundation. Yes, she has been very philanthropic to the university. Part of the money I paid her probably went to you guys. That is how I got here. I started looking around and I didn't have one single competitor that was based here. Every single shopping center was done by somebody who had come into Las Vegas from Phoenix or LA or San Francisco or somewhere and then leave again. I significantly remember George Garcia at the time, who was then the planning director for the City of Henderson. I went to visit him and said, "I am going to put Costco and Home Depot at Sunset and Marks, which abuts the freeway." In fact Marks Street wasn't in. We were going back and forth and he is tough as nails on me as a planning director. We are arguing over the size of the signs and the colors. Then I happen to mention that I am moving to Las Vegas. Well, that opened all the doors. I was no longer a carpet bagger coming to Henderson, now I was a local. That sure made a difference. Ever since then we have used that, "that we are local developers." The most important thing the elected officials want to hear, and these are the people that make all the decisions on what the centers are going to look like, what the uses are going to be, is that we are not merchant developers. There is nothing wrong with that, but we are not. A merchant developer will build a shopping center, sell it and move on to the next deal. We don't. In 30 years we have sold very few. In each case, like this one here, we have a partner, for whatever reason, either they have put up the money or they own the land, but in each case where we sold there was a partner who put a gun to our head and said, "I am pulling the trigger. We are selling this property." The reason I say that is 8 that when you know that you have to keep the property for 50 years, you do a better job in design, landscaping, and most importantly, maintenance, because you have to live with it. The retailers, our tenants, are not going to stick around if you are not going to maintain the property properly or you are not good landlords. Evidence of that is during the recession, a lot of our little tenants came to us and said, "Hey, we are losing money. We are going to leave unless you are going to reduce our rent." We were able to do that in almost every case to keep them there recognizing that they weren't making the money that they were before. So that is a good landlord and we consider ourselves good landlords and we are in it for the long run. The city and county officials who give us our entitlements are really aware of that. C: I want to know about your years on the planning commission. My first night on the planning commission, I had flown in from Hawaii, I don't think I had any sleep. I flew in on the red-eye that day and went to the planning commission meeting. Those were the days when there were a zillion things going on, there was so much action. S: What year was this? C: 1998. Could have been. I don't remember the year but I was appointed by Jan Jones. Jan was the mayor at the time. I came in and I hadn't had any sleep and it is now 1:30AM. Somebody would stand up and they would say, "Good morning." I am dizzy at that point. A young lady who owns a medical facility where she took care of children during the daytime where single mothers could go out and work wanted to go from 6 bedrooms to 16 bedrooms in the same neighborhood. Half of the people in the audience are standing up and saying she is terrific and we have no problem with her. The other half are saying she is terrific but what happens if she gets run over by a bus or runs off to LA 9 with a new husband and we have already given her this permit and somebody else comes in and doesn't run it properly. I said, "Listen, I got married in LA but I would rather be run over by a bus." All of the commissioners turn around and look at me. People in the audience, the ones that are left, are laughing. The chairman was probably thinking, “Oh God, I'm going to be stuck with him for four years.” But both I and Ric Truesdell, who was on the commission with me, were the only ones who really knew about real estate, it helped to have that background. The only unfortunate part of that four years is the City Attorney ruled that if Chris Kaempfer’s law firm, which was a land use law firm, was up before us I had to abstain, because we hire them to do our land use work. It was the City Attorney's idea that I should abstain, get out of my chair and go in the back and watch TV or something. At the time, he was a very active land use attorney so I didn't get a chance to vote on all matters. There were some juicy ones I would have liked to have given my input. We have had people stand in front of us with a design that would never work. At the time, Chris probably had 30 years instead of 60 years of experience like I have now. I proceeded to ask why. You have this little grocery market and there is no parking around it, downtown. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. Then they put us on TV. That was the change in the planning commission. Before we didn't have as many people talk as much. Now they come up in front and they are on TV and the red light goes on and they talked and the meetings would go on for hours. S: Was there a time limit for each speaker? Yes, but our chairperson was very loose about the time. He was very good. He is a lawyer, but he wouldn't really set them down. I watched the time. I think Trina Fiero was chairman of the County Planning Commission and she didn't put up with any of that. Three minutes and bang, you are gone out of there. Our chairman was pretty lose and let everybody speak. 10 S: Who were some of your fellow commissioners at the time? Present Commissioner Quinn's husband, I forget his first name … he was a general contractor … Byron Goynes. There was an African-American man who ran for city council a couple of times. Yes, he was. The attorney was our chairman and then there was Ric Truesdell and there was a lady who was a cocktail waitress. She researched everything. She didn't have a real estate background but she went out and looked at every single thing that was on the agenda. S: She physically went out and looked at the sites? Yes, she would ask questions that I hadn't even thought about because I hadn't seen it. Some of the important ones I would go out and look at. You don't have the time if you have a full time job. S: Your first project was at Charleston and Rainbow. Was that the northwest corner where the Albertson's is? Yes. S: What was your next project after that? The next one after that was the northeast corner of Sunset and Marks where we had Costco and Home Depot. Years later we developed the northwest corner when we moved Costco across the street and put in Best Buy and all the other stores. About the same time we did a shopping center for Irwin Molasky at the corner of Maryland Parkway and Katie. Irwin called it Best on the Boulevard. One day Irwin calls me and says, "I have this center that is losing money. Vons was in there and a bunch of other tenants that have gone broke, national tenants. What can I do?" I said, "Sell the back part to the County." I knew the County was looking for a place for a park. I said, "I'll remodel the back piece and we will be partners." 11 He said, "Okay." The one after that was Best in the West, which was at the northeast corner of Rainbow and Lake Mead. That one I pleaded with Irwin, "Please don't sell this center. We have these great national retailers." But for whatever reason he wanted to sell it and we made a lot of money, as we did with the Costco center in Henderson. He was my partner on that one. For obvious reasons I didn't have the money to buy the land. He is a terrific partner. He never told me what to do. He would just put up the bucks and let me do the work. C: How did you acquire those tenants? That is a very good question. You look around and if there is a Vons here, here, and here, then you call up the Vons real estate person and say, "You should be in this area." If they like you they will listen to you. It involved a lot of schmoozing, and not being married at the time I had a lot of time on my hands to wine and dine whoever it may be. The retailers all have real estate representatives. They call them real estate directors or real estate managers now. Those are the people you have to sit down with and say, "Where do you want to be next?" The perfect example is our million square foot center at Rainbow and the 215. A number of years ago I was with the Walmart real estate broker. He is a broker, not an employee of Walmart. However, he is their exclusive broker. I was pitching him on going into some land across from an Albertsons center we had built at Warm Springs and Rainbow. We had the land on the northwest corner. He said, "No good. Get the land at the freeway and Rainbow." I said, "Okay." As it turns out the family that controlled the property was from Los Angles and I grew up with them socially. My son actually went to Beverly Hills High and went all through school with their son. I contacted them as they are strictly office and industrial developers. I said, "Hey, I want to be in partnership with you. I think I can bring in Walmart and Sam's Club." Once you get them you call Best Buy 12 and Home Depot and say, "I have Walmart and Sam's Club." Best Buy/Home Depot says okay. And you go on down the line of national retailers because they are all relying upon each other. The goal being the anchor draws and brings customers there. They want to be next to whomever that may be. That has been a very successful center. We have a participating ground lease with the county, which means the county owns the land and they participate in the net operating income. That is their rent. The more money we make the more money they make. That is a 50 year ground lease. S: Is that a common sort of arrangement? No, but it is here with the county that has a lot of that land along the 215 in that area. Technically the land is owned 85% by the BLM and 15% by the county, but the county administers it. If the BLM were to administer it, I would be sitting here ten years later still waiting for some kind of a formal approval. It has been very terrific working with the county. They have been very good to work with. In addition to the rent, the county receives real property taxes. There are sales tax revenue coming from it. There was rent coming from it. They get three shots of money every time we do something. It is a real win-win for them. It is even better than an office building where they don't get sales tax. I am sure they are very happy with the income from it. We have the prime tenants and they are not going anywhere. We have the A location. Rainbow, in that area is a major north-south retail street. We are now planning to add on south of it, a 13 acre parcel that the county owns that we are going to do the same thing on, with more retailers. It is not as easy today as it was when we did it in 2006-2007, opening it up in 2008. Those were good days then. We don't have the amount of retailers. We have to drag them by the ear there. 13 S: I grew up in Orange County. My family is still there. Every time I am there and we have to go to the market we go to Pavilions. We don't have a Pavilions here. We have Vons, but I come back here and I think we are not good enough for Pavilions. Actually, they put one near my old home, at Town Center, north of the Summerlin Parkway. However, it’s now an Albertson’s. S: Okay. Good, so we did deserve a Pavilions briefly. It was Vons' desire to put them in affluent areas. S: But Summerlin is an affluent area. Yes. Look where the Whole Foods go, because the Whole Foods prices are higher and they put them where people that can afford to, shop there. I have a second home in Newport Beach. We have Gelson's, Whole Foods, and Bristol Farms in addition to Vons's Pavilions. My wife shops at Bristol Farms because they have a meat counter and she can call in and order. It's like the old-fashioned meat market. I went over one day to pick up a steak at the last minute. I introduced myself. They will call the house and ask her what she needs for the weekend. That is pretty good service. Of course, they charge you for it. You don't get that anywhere any more. S: Gelson's doesn't think it would be worthwhile to put in a store here in Summerlin? We have tried to get Gelson's. Finally after years of screaming at them in the Coachella Valley they finally put a store in Rancho Mirage, which is a very affluent area where I use to have a home, but it is the wrong location. Now we are trying to put them in Palm Springs and working them. All the national retailers we brought here was during the good days. It is tough for them today. Grocery markets are a little different because not too much of that can you buy over the internet, but everything else. You can walk into a Best Buy and somebody is writing down the TV 14 numbers and right there in the store they call or order online to be sent to their home and maybe they have saved the sales tax. We are trying to get the Congress and the Senate to agree to charge a sales tax on anything purchased on the internet here in Nevada. We are one of the few states that doesn’t do that. Not only are we losing the tax money, but it might be the difference between somebody going into a store and giving that brick and mortar operator the profit as opposed to somebody shipping it from Amazon. Congressman Heck, even though I support him, says he doesn’t want to create more taxes for people. It is not creating more taxes. He says, "Show me that." I said, "Okay." At that point I got too busy. C: When you started out, after your second development in Brentwood, you did some apartments. Were they in Brentwood as well? Yes. But then the commercial was all over, it was where the Speedy Mart, now it's the Seven Eleven wanted to be. I would just go out to lunch with the Seven Eleven guy and say, "I drove by the corner of Santa Monica and something and there is a vacant lot and I would love to put a Seven Eleven there." So we made a deal. It would cost me a total of $60,000 land and building. At the time I couldn't afford to hold onto it so I sold it to a retired vice president of Coldwell Banker for $90,000. I made $30,000 on it and was happy as could be. A very dear friend of mine owns it today and he had a four million dollar offer on it and turned it down. On Santa Monica Boulevard, one block off of Westwood, so it is right in the middle of the action there. Small little lot. The lease he has is the original lease and has my signature on it. S: As the demographics change in a neighborhood do you see it first in the nearby shopping center? 15 Irwin Molasky developed the southwest corner of Sahara and Maryland Parkway. Irwin owned an old, horrible center there. It was a bunch of empty stores. I came to him one day and said, "Lucky has a very good market one block south at Sahara, on Maryland Parkway. I am going to get them to move over. I am going to clear off everything. They will bring Sav-on with them because it was owned by the same company, American Stores owned Sav-on and Lucky and the people that owned it liked to put their market and drug together. I said, "Irwin, you contribute your land to the partnership. The partnership will buy the rest of the land around it so we have enough land to do all this." Jerry Herbst had an old station on the corner. We came to Jerry and said, "You remodel that and we will have a brand new center." At the time we got the highest rent a grocery market has paid in Las Vegas there. They closed Albertsons and then took it over when they bought Lucky stores. They closed it on Christmas, three or four years ago, at least. They are paying $1.5 million a year in rent plus common area maintenance and utilities and real estate taxes and insurance. They closed it because it is cheaper for them to just pay all that than to operate because the demographics of the neighborhood changed. S: Is that the corner where the Elephant Bar used to be? No. This is the southwest corner. C: It is a corner where there is a gas station on the corner. Yes, i