Tarkanian to take name off club

UNLV basketball Coach Jerry Tarkanian said Friday he is removing his name from a nightclub where a police officer shot and killed a man two weeks ago.

Removing the name is "no big deal," Tarkanian said. "It’s something I had intended to do anyway. This whole thing just triggered it."

Jarvis Delane Rice was killed in the early morning hours of Aug. 4 after Las Vegas police said he was involved in a shootout between gangs outside Tarkanian’s Celebrity Sports Club at 4550 S. Maryland Parkway.

A coroner’s jury unanimously cleared Sgt. Gary Schofield after an inquest Thursday into Rice’s death.

Tarkanian said he agreed to let the club use his name when it opened three years ago for a percentage of the profits, but he never saw a penny."It was always in the hole," he said.

Tarkanian said he has not had much involvement with the club since it came under new ownership about a year ago, when he first considered taking his name off the business.

"They weren’t making any money, so I decided to just let them use my name," he said.

Jerry Brown, general manager of Tarkanian’s, said the club would soon be undergoing cosmetic changes, as well as the name change.Alterations of the club’s appearance will be aimed at attracting new clientele to avoid a repeat of the Aug. 4 incident, which sparked a parking-lot riot and nearly cost the business its license, Brown said.

He said the club also will try new forms of entertainment. Prior to the shooting, Saturday nights at Tarkanian’s had a rap music theme, Brown said. Now the club will have promotions to woo college students from the nearby university, he said.

Last week, on the first Saturday night after the shooting, Brown closed the club at 10:30 p.m.

He said he wanted to avoid further problems, and the club was nearly empty anyway.

"It was rather devastating to us, because of all the notoriety, of course," Brown said.