Major Club Solicited as Investor in Casino Plan : Oxnard: California Commerce’s board will consider a local businessman’s proposal next week. But no decision has been made.

Owners of the state’s second-largest card club are potential backers of a new proposal to build a large casino in Oxnard, sources familiar with the proposal said Friday.

Shareholders of the California Commerce Club just east of Los Angeles are being solicited as investors in a casino proposal by Oxnard businessman Keith Wintermute, who recently took out city application papers to build an Oxnard casino, the sources said.

Wintermute, 39, a video producer, refused to say who else is involved in his project.

“It’s really premature to stipulate who the backers are,” he said. “We have a couple of meetings coming up that we have to go through first.”

Peter Lynch, a Commerce Club board member, confirmed Friday evening that Wintermute’s proposal will be discussed by the club’s nine-person board Wednesday. But Lynch said no decision has been made on the deal.

“We haven’t authorized a nickel,” he said. “We’ll listen but we’re not sure we’re going to do anything. I haven’t seen anything in writing and we’ve authorized no contracts.”

Negotiations so far apparently have been between Wintermute and one or more of the club’s 34 shareholders, Lynch said.

The California Commerce Club was the center of a high-profile scandal in 1984, when four Commerce city officials--including three City Council members--pleaded guilty in federal court to participating in a hidden-ownership scheme.

Since then, however, the current owners have operated without further charges of political corruption, and Commerce city officials said they received $10.2 million in taxes in 1991-92 from gambling receipts that approached $80 million.

Commerce Club officials are now trying to expand into Orange County with a casino in Anaheim. They were unsuccessful in a similar bid in San Diego County in 1992.

Gambling industry sources said the highly profitable Commerce Club is now interested in Ventura County because of the lack of competition and the fear that they could lose many of their San Fernando Valley customers to whomever builds in Oxnard.

Sources said Commerce Club officials are considering a request by Wintermute for $10,000 to study the feasibility of a casino here and do the initial legwork with the city.

If the casino is built, Wintermute and his partner, Charles Brohammer, would also own a small part of it, sources said.

Negotiations between Wintermute and Commerce Club officials began about a month ago. Casino officials have “made a tentative decision to go for the deal,” one source said. “That will be firmed up next week.”

Lynch said, however, that not even a tentative decision has been made and nothing will be decided for at least two weeks. Wednesday’s meeting would be the first board-level discussion of the matter, he said.

The Commerce Club coalition is the third group to enter the competition to bring big-time gambling to Ventura County.

Since Oxnard City Council members first indicated last year that they would consider casinos as a money-raising option, two promoters have submitted applications to build large clubs with about 50 tables and 50,000 square feet of casino space. Both would be along the Ventura Freeway in business or commercial parks.

Oxnard could expect to reap between $500,000 and $2 million a year from a single club, with charities getting $500,000, the promoters estimate. By comparison, Oxnard’s annual general fund budget is about $60 million, but could shrink by $4 million next fiscal year because of cuts in state funding.

Wintermute has said he expects to file a formal application by June, but is not yet sure how large his group’s casino would be or where it would be situated.

“Right now the people we’re working with haven’t gotten that far,” Wintermute said in an interview early this week. “We have done a demographic study. But it’s all very preliminary.”

Wintermute owns Card Productions of Oxnard, which he said has produced videos and films on drugs, alcoholism and AIDS for private companies, government agencies and television.

Wintermute said he and his father-in-law, Brohammer, are partners in both the video company and the casino deal. Brohammer, 67, once served on the county’s alcohol advisory board and helped start several local alcohol recovery centers, Wintermute said.

An Oxnard city committee is reviewing the card club issue, and the City Council will hold study sessions in June to decide whether the cash-short city should approve a card club to bring in gaming taxes.

The city attorney has said Oxnard does not have to put the casino issue before voters as a referendum as generally required in California, because the city allowed gambling before the new state gaming law went into effect in 1984.