LAS VEGAS (AP) — The owner of one of the best-known brothels in the West says he wants to sell the business he's run for 22 years.
Ken Green said Monday he's putting his Chicken Ranch brothel, near the Nye County town of Pahrump about 60 miles west of Las Vegas, on the market for just under $7 million.
"I'm going to be 63 this summer," said Green, who splits time between Las Vegas and a Northern California location he refuses to disclose. "I'm just working a little more at it than I want to."
Green said he bought the Chicken Ranch for $1.25 million in 1982 from Walter Plankinton, who named it after the Texas establishment that was made famous on stage and screen as "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Plankinton died in 1984.
"You mention the name 'Chicken Ranch,' everyone gets a little smile on their face and knows what you're talking about," Green said. "We're not raising poultry out there."
Green has dabbled recently in the politics of sex in Las Vegas, speaking up for making prostitution legal in Clark County after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman raised the question last year.
State law prohibits prostitution in the state's two most populous counties, Clark and Washoe, but lets rural counties allow it under state Health Division supervision.