Local News in Brief : City May Buy Poker Club

After more than eight months of intense negotiations, a group of investors for the financially strapped California Bell Club has authorized a plan allowing the City of Bell to take over the gambling operation, which is the target of a criminal investigation.

City Atty. Robert Flandrick and representatives of the casino’s general partnership, the California Bell Club Management Corp., have begun meeting with Superior Court Judge Pro Tem Herbert M. Klein to work out details of the proposed takeover. The purchase talks are expected to take several months, officials said. The $7.1-million purchase would make Bell the first city in the country to own a casino.

Flandrick said that in a recent vote, 74% of the poker club’s 50 limited partners favored the city’s buy-out of their interest in the casino. The four directors in the Bell Club’s general partnership earlier agreed to authorize the takeover action.

The casino has been mired in legal, managerial and financial difficulties since it opened in 1980. The latest trouble came last week when law enforcement officials raided the poker club, a consulting firm in Las Vegas and the homes of two of the general partnership’s directors and seized financial records. The raids were part of a four-month investigation into alleged skimming of proceeds, officials said.