Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [202]
Throughout his playing career, Payton—guided largely by Holmes and Richman—refused to simply allow his money to collect interest. He was an active investor, ranging from a twenty-six-acre shopping center to a sevenmillion-dollar, two-hundred-room hotel to 934 acres of undeveloped timberland in northern Mississippi to a Learjet that he and his partners rented out. A couple paid dividends—Payton and Holmes made a small fortune on the Lakeland Health Care Center, a nursing home in Lakeland, Florida. Most did not—Payton lost a large sum by investing in something called Heavyrope, a weighted–jump rope, and he was one of several athletes to find themselves swindled by Miles Yanca, a ticket broker who was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a scheme that cost investors millions of dollars. “Walter didn’t put a lot of real effort into being a businessman,” said Quirk. “Bud tried to tell him that he needed to pay attention and manage his own stuff, but Walter didn’t have the patience for meetings. He was really smart, and he could read people better than anyone I’ve ever met. But when it came to businesses, he trusted the judgment of others. Sometimes that works. Oftentimes it doesn’t.”
Payton had hoped to retire into a carefree life of fishing and hunting. Much of the money he had earned as a player, however, was gone, lost to bad investments and lavish purchases. He told those around him that he wanted to work. Truth was, he had no choice.
Of his many holdings, the one Payton enjoyed most was Studebaker’s, a 1950s-themed nightclub and lounge located within a strip mall in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. Back in 1981, Holmes and a Houston, Texas–based businessman named Stuart Sargent teamed to open the first Studebaker’s in Mobile, Alabama. A second, in Jackson, Mississippi, followed shortly thereafter, then three more in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Dallas. “Our goal was to have a nightclub for adults in their thirties and forties—one that wasn’t dark and didn’t come with an owner wearing a thick gold chain with a fake blonde on his arm,” said Gene Gunn, an early investor. “We had done a lot of smaller Southern markets, and one day I asked Stuart whether he wanted to give it a go in some major northern cities. That’s where Walter came in.”
A Studebaker’s opened in Chicago in 1983, and that same year the Schaumburg location came to life. Payton picked the strip mall, interviewed and hired most of the staff, used his name to bring instant credibility. Before long, the club was a line-around-the-block hotspot for mostly middle-aged revelers. People from throughout the region drove to 1251 East Golf Road to groove to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and watch the poodleskirted waitresses perform choreographed dances atop the bar. At the same time the television sitcom Cheers was introducing America to a colorful gaggle of bar regulars, Studebaker’s had its own clan of loyal customers who showed up nightly for the bountiful buffet and classic music. A genuine family atmosphere was cultivated, and Payton cherished it.
“That was really Walter’s baby,” said Quirk. “He opened a lot of other nightclubs over the next few years, but Studebaker’s meant the most to him. He’d be in the deejay booth spinning records, in the kitchen waving to customers from the back, telling jokes to the employees. He was in his element.”
Payton so loved being at Studebaker’s that a cluttered, dingy, three-hundred-square-foot storeroom in the rear became his base of business operations. Upon retiring from the Bears, he spent increasingly long hours hunkered down in the cramped space. The nightclub’s employees came to embrace Payton, who would hang out in the alley outside the rear entrance as they smoked cigarettes. Payton always seemed to have some sort of valuable handout—expensive cigars, five-hundred-dollar sunglasses—and he distributed the goods with great zest. “He was so empathetic to us,” said Lana Layne, an employee. “There was no arrogance.”
Lou Visconti, a disc jockey from 1984 to 1992, recalled