San Diego’s Lucky Lady has shut permanently, marking the ending of the city’s once-thriving scorecard room industry.

The club’s octogenarian owner, Henry M. Stanley Penn, quietly sold the social club last-place month to the Family Health Centers of San Diego, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

It seems the pandemic and almost a year of forced closure was the catalyst for William Penn to old bag upwardly his chips for the net time and head for the exit. He had run the 11-table surgical process on El Cajon Boulevard for to a greater extent than 40 years.

There were erst more than 100 card rooms inward San Diego. The Union-Tribune’s Greg Moran fondly remembers joints same Alibi, Doc’s Lo-Ball Poker, and the House of Cards.

He laments that Lucky noblewoman was non only if the last scorecard way inward the urban center — licensed and legal, at least — but that Penn was also single of the finally of California’s “single bozo identity card elbow room owners.” His was a little byplay where ace single(a) pretty often ran the unit show.

Elsewhere inwards the state, scorecard rooms are at present slick down operations, running in emulation of Vegas-style casinos.

Luck Runs Out

Ultimately, San Diego’s identity card rooms were squeezed out of existence past a local ordinance enacted inwards 1983 that prohibited the sale, lease, or transfer of training of any existing license.

This was to “eliminate the deleterious personal effects that such establishments feature on the safety, welfare, and morals of the City,” according to the language of the law. But it meant when licensees retired, their businesses went with them.

Then the demise knell sounded inward 1996, when Calif. position a moratorium on issuing any young identity card elbow room licenses to cap the size of the statewide industry.

Trouble With the Law

The Lucky Lady’s finally competitor inwards the metropolis was the Palomar. But its owners in agreement(p) to turn a loss their certify and sell up inward 2015 after they were supercharged by the federal authorities with laundering money for an international illegal sports betting ring.

Penn had his have thicket with the law. In 2016, he was i of 14 people indicted by the FBI next an investigating into illegal bookmaking at the Lucky Lady.

Eventually, the main bookie, Sanders Robert the Bruce Segal, was sentenced to 37 months in prison, spell Penn received a year’s probation and was permitted to keep his license.

Law Could Change

That certify is now officially retired on with its owner, and on that point is currently no way to receive another within the San Diego urban center limits. But that could change.

City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, whose dominion includes the situation of the Lucky Lady, told the Union-Tribune he believes San Diego’s quirky licensing laws could follow doing to a greater extent harm than right by supporting the proliferation of illegal gambling venues.

Elo-Rivera said he’s willing to revisit the ordinance, which just might guide to a revivification of scorecard rooms in San Diego.