Seattle strip club sold for $2.35 million

Published 12:01 am Thursday, June 30, 2011

SEATTLE — Uncle Sam, having no interest in running a cabaret, sold one of Seattle’s most notorious strip clubs for $2.35 million at auction Wednesday, closing another chapter in the wide-ranging racketeering investigation of the city’s best known organized-crime figure, Frank Colacurcio Sr.

Rick’s Nightclub, which hosted the auction, was seized last May as part of the investigation into the now-deceased Colacurcio.

Baxley did not disclose who the winning bidder was, but other adult entertainment figures in attendance thought that strip club chain Deja Vu was the winning bidder.

Seattle attorney Jack Burns, who represents Deja Vu, said the entity that won the property does not have Deja Vu in its title, but declined to comment further.

The winning bidders, one dressed in a suit and wearing dark sunglasses, hurriedly walked away from reporters waiting outside the club, driving away in a black Audi.

Inside, Rick’s remains almost the same as the day agents seized it. The dancing poles and sound system were taken out. But the wall mirrors remain, as well as the stages — and the tacky red-patterned carpet.

There were a few dozen people in attendance at the auction, including a child. Baxley said it was a mix of people in the adult entertainment industry and other business people.

“I came to see who my competition is,” said Joe Walker, owner of the nearby Pandora’s Adult Cabaret.

Before the auction started, pop and R&B music played through the speakers.

“The U.S. government is very motivated to find a buyer for this property today,” said David Levy of LPS Auctions Solutions, a government contractor, before the bidding got under way.

Baxley said the government was hoping for $2 million. The proceeds of the sale will be split up among the federal and local agencies that participated in the investigation.

Colacurcio — the son of a King County farmer — made a name for himself with pinball machines in the 1950s. From there he muscled his way into the jukebox and cigarette vending machine business, then built a topless and strip club empire extending to 10 Western states.

He was identified as a racketeer in hearings before a U.S. Senate organized crime committee in 1957 and periodically served time for racketeering and tax convictions.

But he remained a bane of investigators who suspected him of involvement of several contract-style murders. Colacurcio was never charged in those cases.

In 2003, an attempt to expand a parking lot at Rick’s backfired in a campaign contribution scandal that cost two Seattle City Council members their seats. That case prompted a wider inquiry — one the Seattle Police Department described as its largest-ever organized crime investigation. Over the next four years, investigators infiltrated Colacurcio’s strip clubs as customers and employees and secreted surveillance cameras in the clubs.

The resulting federal indictment included graphic details of prostitution. Colacurcio died last summer.

“The forfeiture and disposal (of Rick’s) marks the end of his ring,” Baxley said.

A call to Irwin Schwartz, who represented Colacurcio, was not immediately returned for comment.

Another one of Colacurcio’s properties was also auctioned off for $600,000. The Internal Revenue Service is handling the disposal of another of Colacurcio’s seized properties, Baxley said.