Council to Vote on Reopening Card Room

For nearly 30 years, Robert S. Bonta ran his Rendezvous Card Room in a drab building near the railroad tracks in rural Moorpark. Throughout the years, the two-table, low-ball poker club remained virtually unknown except to its patrons.

No longer. The club was closed in December after Bonta died, and his two children’s desire to reopen it has spawned a major controversy in the growing community.

The question of whether the card room should be allowed to resume operation has pitted many longtime residents--who feel a sense of nostalgia about the Rendezvous--against newer suburbanites, who fear it could become a Gardena-like gambling palace.

On Council Agenda

A final decision will be made by the Moorpark City Council, comprised mostly of longtime residents. A majority has so far supported the card room’s reopening, but with stringent restrictions to ensure that Moorpark does not become Ventura County’s gambling mecca.

Today, the council will take up the issue for the third time in about a month.

The Rendezvous opened in 1958. Soon afterward, the county Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance prohibiting new card clubs. Moorpark adopted the same ordinance in 1983, when the city incorporated.

The measure provided that existing clubs could remain open as long as the original owner was alive.

Over the years, Bonta purposely kept the Rendezvous a small-time operation to make it unattractive to big-time gamblers. Maximum bets were low and the club was open just three days a week, and never on Sunday. There were only two gaming tables with room for eight people each. Usually, there were only enough players for one game, former players said.

‘Social Club’

The Rendezvous, on Moorpark’s main business road, came to be regarded as a “social club” more than gambling parlor, players said.

“The people who played all know each other by their first names,” said Ed Stein, a former Rendezvous player and Westlake Village resident. “We are not ogres. We’re basically good people.”

Last month, Bonta’s children, Mary Ann Haney of Moorpark and Warren Bonta of Sacramento, asked the council to amend the regulatory ordinance to allow them to reopen the card room and operate it as their father had.

“It’s a tribute to my father,” Haney said at the time. “What we have in mind is to keep the same kind of operation.”

Initially, it appeared there was little sentiment against reopening the club among Moorpark’s 13,700 residents. The only people to oppose the idea at a mid-February meeting were Mayor Albert Prieto and Mayor Pro Tem James D. Weak.

Council members Leta Yancy-Sutton, Thomas C. Ferguson and Danny Woolard voted for the amendment, describing the card room as a friendly, unobtrusive operation that had almost no crime problems in nearly 30 years of business.

The amendment had only minor restrictions, including raising the minimum players’ age from 18 to 21 years and requiring fingerprinting of employees.

But supporters’ hopes that the club would be quietly reopened were shattered at a meeting two weeks later. Although only a handful of residents spoke out, they brought scores of names on petitions opposing the reopening.

The rift between longtime and newer residents became apparent when Woolard asked the first speaker opposing the club how long she had lived in Moorpark and when she first heard of the club. She answered that she had lived in the city 3 1/2 years and heard about the club a couple of weeks before the meeting.

Woolard later explained that, in asking the questions, he had merely wanted to point out that the card club had operated so quietly that many local residents had never been aware of its presence. “If they had seen the operation of the place, they would not be up in arms,” he said.

But opponents were not so afraid of the Rendezvous’ spotless operation in the past as they were about the reopened club leading to a proliferation of gambling rooms or attracting unsavory persons.

Moorpark has attracted the attention of gambling interests in the past. Robert E. Coughlon, lawyer for the Bonta heirs, and Councilwoman Yancy-Sutton said they were approached by gambling interests shortly after Moorpark was incorporated. Both said they turned away the advances.

Legal Questions

Opponents also said they are worried about legal challenges to an ordinance that, while not mentioning the Rendezvous by name, is clearly focused on it.

Cheryl Kane, city attorney, said in an interview that she believes the ordinance will stand up if challenged. She pointed out that the amendment cannot avoid affecting only one business, because there has been only one card room in the city’s history.

Faced with public opposition to reopening the card club for the first time, council members added more restrictions to the proposed ordinance amendment in an attempt to ensure that the club operated as in the past.

Although Haney and Warren Bonta earlier opposed proposed limitations on betting levels, Coughlon said last week that they will agree to all of the restrictions, which also prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages and limit the club to two tables.