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June 15, 2005
Ringle purchases Beatty businessesBURRO INN, EXCHANGE CLUB CLOSED FOR NOW
By ROBIN FLINCHUM
Despite the exodus of close to half of the town's population, it was Ringle who gambled on opening the first big name motel in Beatty, with the inauguration of a Motel 6 in 2003. Prior to that time, Beatty was one of the last strongholds where visitors relied exclusively on local independents, including the Exchange Club, the longest continually operating hotel and casino in town, as well as the Burro Inn, the Phoenix Inn, El Portal Motel, and Ringle's own Stagecoach Hotel. But as the local economy slumped, these independent businesses struggled to stay afloat until last December, when both the Exchange Club and the Burro Inn finally threw in the towel and reportedly approached Ringle, asking him to buy them out. Ringle agreed. His purchase of the two properties gave him a near monopoly on the local hospitality and gaming industry, with control of about 255 of the approximately 335 beds available in Beatty. And, when he assumed ownership last month, it also involved closing down all or part of both facilities at least temporarily. This put an estimated 103 people out of work, and angered some local residents who are suspicious of this full court press approach. But Sue Hackett, executive director of the Beatty Chamber of Commerce, says the change is likely to be good for Beatty in the long run, and the current unemployment is only temporary. "This is really the best time this could happen," Hackett said, since Beatty is heading into its slowest season of the year. The rooms in town would not likely be occupied during the hot summer months anyway, and renovations could be complete by fall, when business picks up again, Hackett said. Meanwhile, Ringle's Stagecoach Casino is the only operational gambling facility in town. Ringle now owns five of the 49 businesses (roughly 10 percent) belonging to the Beatty Chamber of Commerce, Hackett said, and "he has put a lot of money into this town to make it grow. I have a lot of respect for him." His Death Valley Nut and Candy Company, next door to the Stagecoach Motel and Casino, is a popular stop for travelers, "and he wants to see Beatty become what it should be," Hackett said. But not everyone has the same vision for his or her small town. Several local residents and business people expressed misgivings, but were unwilling to comment publicly. But Charles Cook, a longtime Beatty resident, has no qualms about speaking his mind when it comes to Ed Ringle. Although Ringle took out a full billboard size ad to denounce the Bank of America Corporation when it announced plans to close its Beatty branch, Cook lumps Ringle and the Bank of America together as cast from the same corporate-minded clay. "This guy has a control complex," Cook wrote of Ringle in a recent edition of his homespun Beatty News. "He does not want competition! Well, now he has what he wants. The fact that he has put people out of work is secondary to his view of Beatty's future and his monstrous ambition." But the Chamber's Hackett takes a different view. Hackett moved to Beatty from Pahrump in February to assume the Chamber Director position because, she said, she had fallen in love with the little town and its possibilities. "I didn't come here to watch this town waste away," she said. And Ringle, whether his style is popular or not, she pointed out, is helping to keep it alive. That he doesn't live in Beatty, or even in the state of Nevada, is a cause of resentment for many locals, but she said that the overall economic benefits of his investments to the town could not be denied. Hackett said she believes that one of the reasons Ringle has been investing so heavily in Beatty is another promised change for the town - the advent of the Hollywood Stuntman Hall of Fame. This project, which Hackett promotes zealously and unabashedly, would help, she said, "to make Beatty into a destination, rather than a pass through town." And this said Keith Kearns, on site general manager of Ringle's Beatty properties, is what the Ringle enterprises are about. "We want Beatty to be more than a pee stop on the way to Death Valley," he said. "We want people to stay a few days, to see that it's a resort destination." The old Burro Inn, Kearns said, will eventually be franchised into a Best Western Motel, called the Death Valley Inn, and the Exchange Club would be refurbished. But Kearns said he could not estimate how long these endeavors might take, since qualified labor to do the work is scarce. A lot of the familiar sites in Beatty will disappear in the months to come, Kearns said, including the building that up until recently housed the Amargosa Toad gift shop. The shop itself relocated to another part of town and expanded, but the little building is scheduled for demolition, as is the casino segment of the Burro Inn. "We want to build it nice," Kearns said, "so people will want to stay." That the closure of two of the town's longtime sources of employment put people out of work was regrettable, Kearns said, but unavoidable. "Those businesses were going under. Sure people get laid off, that's just what happens. We absorbed as many of the qualified people as we could, but I just don't have another 40 or 50 jobs to offer." But eventually, said Hackett, the planned improvements, along with a proposed wind and solar energy farm outside of town, would bring more business, and therefore ultimately more jobs to the town. The proposed Best Western Death Valley Inn, said Hackett, will be almost directly across the street from the temporary facility for the Hollywood Stuntman Hall of Fame, which she believes will draw large numbers of people to Beatty in its own right. "It's the only one of its kind in the world," she said, "and there will be live action demonstrations and all kinds of interesting exhibits you can't see anywhere else." As yet, however, the Hall of Fame has no scheduled opening date, since its organizers are still fundraising in order to bring the exhibits out of storage and get them set up in Beatty. For a small community, many of whose families have lived in Beatty for generations, this out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new style of doing business is nerve racking, if not downright disturbing. But as businesses like the Bank of America pull out and the population continues to decline, newcomer enthusiasts like Hackett and Kearns say they believe progress is the only thing that will keep their small town alive. |
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