Just check your car before you leave
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/apr/29/hot-dogs-beer-and-car-bombs/
Hot Dogs, Beer, And Car Bombs
10
By
Don Bauder,
April 29, 2004
Was that hot dog you ate at Petco Park unsavory? Fans have complained about unsavory food at the new ballyard. Well, for years the company that provided you that hot dog has been trying to overcome an unsavory past -- particularly, financial involvement with notorious mobsters.
While investigators haven't found organized-crime relationships in recent years, and the successor company now enjoys a reputation for professionalism, the malodor lingers on. When the company bids on a concessions contract, competitors disinter the sordid past. When the firm gets a prestigious contract, such as for concessions at Yosemite National Park, the press digs into its past.
The company says it has cleaned house, but as the
Wall Street Journal pointed out in a story November 17, 1994, the question of whether efforts are a cleanup or a whitewash "seems destined to plague the company for at least another generation."
The exclusive food service and retail concessionaire at Petco is called Sportservice. It is part of Delaware North Companies of Buffalo, New York, a privately held company with more than $1.6 billion in sales, concessions contracts at major sports stadiums, and a big stake in the gambling industry through racetracks, casinos, slot machines, and, of late, combination racetracks and casinos, called "racinos."
The predecessor company was named Emprise. It was founded in 1915 by three brothers. One of them, the late Lou Jacobs -- longtime head and patriarch of the company -- became infamous for his underworld relationships. The
Reader's retelling of Emprise's history won't make that hot dog any tastier, but it serves as another example of the historical connection between professional sports and the gambling industry.
Wendy Watkins, spokesperson for Delaware North, says this about the food: "In any brand-new venue, there are bound to be areas for improvement." The first season "is a learning experience, and we are responsive to comments and suggestions from fans."
I gave her a list of questions about Emprise's dubious past associations. She passed the queries to the company's outside counsel, who said that Emprise is "a twice-removed predecessor of Delaware North that was
dissolved in 1978 -- 26 years ago -- and the management of Delaware North played no role whatsoever in the operations of Emprise."
However, Delaware North's website makes it clear that the Jacobs family, owners of Emprise, own Delaware North. The current chairman and chief executive, Jeremy M. Jacobs Sr., one of Lou Jacobs's sons, headed a Canadian subsidiary of the Jacobs empire as early as 1961 and became chairman in 1968 at age 28 upon his father's death. As John Emshwiller's 1994
Wall Street Journal article pointed out, Jeremy Jacobs took over the parent company at a time that "investigators were probing the intensely private company for evidence of organized-crime ties." Later, the company became Delaware North.
In 1972, after Howard Hughes had bought Las Vegas's Frontier Hotel and Casino, a jury in Los Angeles federal court concluded that the casino's real ownership had been illegally concealed. Among the actual owners had been Anthony J. Zerilli and Michael S. Polizzi, "two high-ranking members of the Detroit Mafia family," according to
The Boardwalk Jungle by Ovid Demaris. Another owner was Emprise, which, according to the jury, had loaned a bundle of money to front men for the allegedly mob-related owners. According to Demaris, Emprise also jointly owned a Detroit racetrack with Zerilli and Polizzi.
As a result of the Frontier case, some of the alleged mobsters went to prison; Emprise was fined $10,000, according to both
The Wall Street Journal and
The Boardwalk Jungle. Lou Jacobs and his son, Max, were named as unindicted co-conspirators. "That same year [1972],
Sports Illustrated put the late Lou Jacobs on its cover under the headline, 'The Godfather of Sports,' " wrote investigative reporter John R. Emshwiller in the
Wall Street Journal's comprehensive 1994 piece on Delaware North and its predecessor, Emprise.
In that story, Emshwiller said that Jeremy Jacobs "doesn't deny that his father traveled in a rough-and-tumble world. Lou Jacobs built the company by obtaining lucrative concession contracts at sports facilities and other locations in return for providing millions of dollars in upfront payments and loans to stadium and team owners."
Continued Emshwiller, "Some of those loans went to horse tracks, dog tracks, and jai alai arenas. Besides concessionaire, the company also became owner and operator of a number of such facilities. Mr. Jacobs says his father's forays into the gambling world unavoidably put the company into contact with questionable characters. 'It went with the territory,' he says."
In the year 2000, when a Delaware North subsidiary won the concessions contract at Yosemite National Park, the company's past hit the headlines. On August 27, 2000, Michael Doyle of the
Fresno Bee wrote, "Before Delaware North entered Yosemite, competitors reminded regulators of the company's time as Emprise." Under Lou Jacobs, "Emprise had some dealings with organized crime figures. Congressional hearings revealed old company practices that included secret cash payments to politicians in the 1950s," as well as the Frontier Hotel and Casino fine.
Karen Liberatore, a Delaware North spokesperson, told the
Bee, "Those are things that happened more than 40 years ago. A lot of time has passed, and the company is run entirely differently."
Many things happened decades ago. According to the
Las Vegas Review-Journal, money from Emprise and the corruption-ridden Teamsters permitted Morris B. "Moe" Dalitz, whom the newspaper identified as a former Cleveland bootlegger and racketeer, to take over the Stardust casino from Jake "The Barber" Factor, a friend of Al Capone.
I first ran across Emprise when I was bureau chief in Cleveland for
Business Week from 1966 to 1973. In fact, my first interest in investigative financial reporting came when I was anonymously sent a prospectus for a public offering for a slot-machine maker named Bally Manufacturing. The Securities and Exchange Commission held up the offering for months because of a principal's alleged longtime relationship with Gerardo "Jerry" Catena, whom Demaris calls a "Genovese family underboss" and close friend of Lucky Luciano.
