2001 Odyssey acquires Mons Venus to carry on strip club legacy in Tampa
Full-nude club Mons Venus and its fiery owner Joe Redner helped Tampa earn the reputation as a 'strip club capital of the country."
Now, 2001 Odyssey — the strip joint across the street with a spaceship on its roof — plans to carry on its legacy.
2001 Odyssey acquired the 'world-famous' Mons Venus at 2040 N. Dale Mabry Highway in January, owner Don Kleinhans told the Tampa Bay Times on Thursday.
'What's happening is we purchased the business, not the real estate,' said Kleinhans, president of 2001 Inc. 'So we have the business but (Redner) is the landlord.'
The goal is to preserve the Mons Venus — with some improvements — instead of seeing an out-of-town company take over.
'For like, the last 15 years, Joe's been a buddy of ours. But it's interesting, because he was also our direct competitor, and we've always kind of worked together instead of against each other,' Kleinhans said. 'And in October, he gave me a call and said, 'Hey, listen, I think the time might be right. And I've always told him I was interested.''
Kleinhans said 2001 Odyssey will pay Redner rent as well as a consulting fee.
'It wasn't a sale. It was a management contract,' Redner said when reached by a reporter over the phone. 'I don't want to talk to you about it.'
Before opening the Mons Venus, Redner was credited with launching Tampa's first full-nude club in the 1970s. Some call him the father of the lap dance. In the late '90s, he led a highly-publicized war against the city of Tampa over the 'six-foot rule,' an ordinance that required naked dancers to maintain a distance of six feet from patrons.
Kleinhans has been quiet about the new management contract as his team worked to give the Mons a facelift. He wants it to be 'the same club, just refreshed.'
'It really needed modernization, and I think it was one of the last clubs in the U.S. that was operating on a jukebox,' he said.
All 2,000 bulbs in the iconic Mons Venus sign have been replaced. Redner famously used the marquee to spread political messages and even chastise former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco.
Other upgrades include new upholstery, lighting and sound, plus adding mirrors to 'every flat surface.' There's a private VIP room where full-nude dances will continue. The bathroom will soon get doors on the stalls, after years without them.
Redner always had female leadership at the Mons Venus, so Kleinhans hired Bambi Wilde, former Miss Nude World, to be general manager.
'I think Joe Redner has allowed all of the clubs in Tampa to have the success that they have, just due to his morality and his position of fighting for the industry. And I've always looked up to Joe,' Kleinhans said. 'I just think it's very important as a world-renowned place and a Tampa landmark that the legacy continues.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Person posed as ‘60 Minutes' producer to hunt for info on Florida land deal
For Matt Chipperfield, the request seemed like any other. Since the St. Johns County fishing charter captain first learned last month the state could trade away 600 acres of his community's pristine wilderness preserve, he'd been speaking to reporters and podcasters to spread information that he hoped would block the deal. So when a person claiming to be a producer for '60 Minutes' called him May 19, Chipperfield figured it was just another inquiry. The person, who identified themselves as 'Oliver,' asked him what he knew about the land swap and who he thought might be behind it. He also scheduled an interview. But Oliver repeatedly rescheduled the sit-down, according to text messages reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times. The producer first cited food poisoning, then said '60 Minutes' had secured an interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis but the governor was running late. Eventually, Chipperfield stopped hearing back. But the person wasn't a producer with '60 Minutes' at all, the Times has confirmed. The news program doesn't employ any producer named Oliver, according to a spokesperson for CBS. Additionally, no one from '60 Minutes' interviewed the governor. DeSantis has had an acrimonious relationship with that news program since a segment aired in 2021 that was critical of his handling of the COVID pandemic, sparking backlash from both the governor and some Democratic officials. '60 minutes? That's funny‚' replied DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin via email when asked if an interview took place. ('60 Minutes' in Australia, which has no affiliation to the CBS News show but has the same name, also confirmed it doesn't have any producer named Oliver — or anyone in Florida at the moment.) 'They were pumping me for information about who I was talking to,' said Chipperfield, whose social media videos about the controversy have drawn hundreds of thousands of views. 'It was nefarious in nature, but it also let me know that I said something that put pressure on somebody.' It's unclear who Oliver really works for. The Times called and texted the numbers used to contact Chipperfield, but no one responded. This episode is the latest and perhaps most bizarre twist in a public lands controversy that has remained a tightly kept secret. Weeks after a recently created limited liability corporation withdrew the proposal in response to protests by Floridians, nearly all the particulars of the deal have remained hidden. That includes what The Upland LLC would have done with the 600 acres of pristine wildlife preserve. When the company shelved its proposal, a letter from its lawyer to state officials said only that the public was misinformed, and 'there was never any intention to develop the acquired land for commercial or community development purposes.' The public also still doesn't know the identity of the person or company behind the LLC. State Rep. Kim Kendall, R-St. Augustine, has asked the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for weeks to reveal the person behind The Upland LLC so she can meet with them. The 600 acres in the deal are in her district. But the agency has so far refused, Kendall said in response to questions from the Times. Last week, the agency's legislative affairs director, Brett Tubbs, told Kendall that 'nobody' in the department knows the identity, she said, and the staff has only interacted with the lawyer representing The Upland LLC, Gary Hunter. When asked for comment, Florida Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Alexandra Kuchta did not address the question directly. 'Ordinarily I wouldn't respond to a question like this, but to be clear: (the Department of Environmental Protection) provided Rep. Kendall with the contact information for the applicant's representative,' she wrote in an email. The agency houses the committee that was days from voting on the land swap when it was pulled. Department of Environmental Protection staff had recommended that state officials on that committee approve the deal. On May 6, the agency's public lands director of eight years, Callie DeHaven, abruptly resigned, according to a copy of her resignation letter obtained by the Times. Kendall said it's been 'frustrating' to not be able to meet with the person behind the land swap. She has said she wants to explore getting the state to buy the LLC's land, adjacent to the Guana River Wildlife Management Area, to add it to the preserve as well as file legislation next year to prevent swaps like this from emerging again. 'Based on the applicant's withdrawal letter, he seems to have a lot to say,' Kendell said in a text. 'From my end, the offer to have a conversation remains open, should he choose to reconsider.' The Times submitted a public records request for a copy of the slideshow presentation that would have been shown at the council meeting to describe the proposal. Kuchta said in an email that officials didn't possess one. The governor's office, too, did not respond to emails asking whether DeSantis' staff knows who's behind the LLC. DeSantis ignored a question from a reporter about the landowner's identity at a news conference in Tampa last month. There are a few other people that may know who owns the 3,066 acres that would have been purchased by the LLC to give to the state in return for the preserved land. There are four landowners, each with hundreds of acres that were identified on the land council's public meeting agenda. Two of the four men did not respond to calls, texts and social media messages from reporters. Daniel Lanier, a senior adviser at Lakeland-based Saunders Real Estate, said a broker approached him in January about buying roughly 1,200 acres of Osceola County land from his client, a Miami man named Ceferino Machado. On May 21 — two days after The Upland LLC formally withdrew its proposal — the broker, whom Lanier said worked for Fusilier Realty Group, canceled the sale. The Fusilier Realty broker has not responded to repeated calls and emails from the Times. 'There was nothing special about it, it was a simple vacant land contract,' Lanier said in a recent interview. 'I had no idea who they were or what they were doing.' A landowner in Volusia County who owns a parcel the LLC would have acquired, Matthew Boni, said the sale of his land also didn't go through. 'As the seller, I was blind to all of that,' he said, referring to the state's controversy. Boni declined to elaborate further, including naming the broker that approached him for the land. Kendall has also been trying to get answers from Hunter, the LLC's lawyer. Rumors have persisted that the developer behind the trade was Patrick Zalupski, chief executive and founder of Dream Finders Homes, a national homebuilding company based in Jacksonville. Zalupski was also appointed by DeSantis in 2023 to serve on the University of Florida Board of Trustees. Dream Finders Homes, through its general counsel Rob Riva, has said it had no involvement in the swap. But Riva has not responded to follow-up emails from the Times asking if Zalupski was involved in his personal capacity, nor has Zalupski responded to repeated voicemails and text messages from reporters. When Rep. Kendall pressed Hunter to set up a meeting with his client, he replied in a text: 'Rep., I'm not trying to be difficult but am not authorized to release any information concerning this matter. That would include Mr. Zalupski's phone number.' The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida's most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Florida AG James Uthmeier denies involvement in Hope Florida transfers to committee he ran
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier denied being involved with the Hope Florida money transfers that are reportedly under investigation and blamed the scandal on interest in the marijuana industry. 'I don't control the decisions of other nonprofits,' Uthmeier said. 'I was on the board of the nonprofit that was focused on exclusively defeating Amendment 3, unrestricted marijuana.' Uthmeier made the comments during a press conference in Pensacola, where he announced the signing of an agreement with the Florida Department of Education to cooperate with the newly created Office of Parental Rights in the AG's office. 'I'll mention the Hope Florida thing," Uthmeier said. 'It's clear there's some political attacks going on.' Uthmeier said he believes the accusations about Hope Florida are being pushed by the marijuana industry. 'I know the big marijuana industry, they put in over $150 million (in the Amendment 3 campaign), they're not very happy about this,' Uthmeier said. 'I know there's some Democrat officials and a legislator in this area that are in bed with that group, and so they want to bring this fight. But at the end of the day, we did the right thing. Everything we did was lawful. We won. I'm proud we won, and I'm glad that we have kept Florida safe, free and open for business in a healthy manner.' Hope Florida is a state program whose stated goal is to help steer Floridians away from state assistance and toward services offered by nonprofits and faith-based organizations. Hope Florida has a foundation to raise private money to support the program. The program was championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis, and news of the scandal broke as speculation in the political press mounted about the first lady making a bid for governor in 2026 to succeed her husband. Earlier this year, the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald reported that a $10 million donation to Hope Florida came out of a $67 million lawsuit settlement with Florida's largest Medicaid contractor, Centene. According to the report, Centene overbilled taxpayers by $67 million, and the DeSantis administration settled the lawsuit with the company for the same amount. Rather than all $67 million going back to the Medicaid program, $10 million was sent to Hope Florida. Hope Florida then passed on the $10 million to political committees, and the money ultimately went to support the campaign against the amendment that would've legalized recreational marijuana in Florida. Pensacola Rep. Alex Andrade, chairman of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, held hearings to investigate the issue and said he found evidence that Uthmeier directed the money to Hope Florida when he was DeSantis's chief of staff. Andrade said he believes the $10 million transfer was illegal and turned over all of his documents his committee obtained to state and federal prosecutors. On May 20, Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald reported that the Leon County state attorney's office couldn't provide the documents because they were part of an open investigation. Andrade's investigation of the transfers has made him a persona non grata in the DeSantis administration. He told the News Journal that state officials have stopped responding to requests from him for other legislative work and on May 21 DeSantis blasted Andrade during a May 21 press conference in response to a question about a reported criminal investigation into the Hope Florida. 'You had a one state representative with a political agenda, and he has a political agenda to try to smear Hope Florida—to try to smear people associated with the administration,' DeSantis said. 'Even my wife, who's done a great job for this state by the way, not just on Hope Florida, saving taxpayers $100 million, getting 30,000 people off means-tested welfare. Show me someone else in this country that has been able to do that?" DeSantis said his wife worked to start Hope Florida and other initiatives while she was first lady and has never been paid for any of that work. He said a person who was clearly Andrade was trying to smear his administration. He never mentioned Andrade's name, but he did use other terms. 'She has led an initiative to help people, and you have one jackass in the legislature—I'm sorry, it's true—who's trying to smear her, smear good people,' DeSantis said. DeSantis repeated the claim that the scandal surrounding Hope Florida is a 'manufactured political operation.' 'How pathetic is it that we have a Republican representative who's engaging in lawfare to try to advance a political agenda?' DeSantis said. 'It stinks, and everybody knows it.' Andrade said Uthmeier's comments in Pensacola on May 23 were 'more deflection from the chief laundering officer of the State of Florida.' 'Why didn't he just answer the question?' Andrade said. 'Unless I'm missing something, his comment amounts to bragging that he used Medicaid funds to fight a ballot initiative.' After DeSantis made his comments on May 21, Andrade responded with a post on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter. 'I want to publicly apologize to @GovRonDeSantis for hurting his feelings by… (checking notes) handing over evidence of criminal activity to law enforcement… My heart bleeds for you Governor…' Andrade wrote. Andrade brushed off the personal attacks by DeSantis when asked by the News Journal. 'I think it's inappropriate of him to be complaining about a criminal investigation,' Andrade said. 'I discovered evidence of money laundering and wire fraud, turned it over to law enforcement. And he's, like, mad that I care about protecting taxpayer money?' Andrade said he doesn't think most people in Pensacola are paying attention to DeSantis' press conferences, but the constituents he has heard from about it have given him positive feedback. 'The only thing I've gotten from constituents is encouragement to get to the bottom of what happened with the funds,' Andrade said. 'As far as like, DeSantis kind of going off the rails, most folks aren't really paying attention.' Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Hope Florida investigation, Andrade said he plans to bring legislation next year that will make it an outright crime to steer money in a state settlement away from state coffers like what happened with Hope Florida. He also wants to look at restricting what type of political activity staff members of the governor's office can engage in similar to restrictions on staff at the federal level. "This wouldn't have happened if DeSantis hadn't had his chief of staff running his presidential campaign, and then running these campaigns against amendments out of the governor's office," Andrade said. "They conflated personal, political and public service, non-stop." This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Florida AG James Uthmeier denies involvement in Hope Florida scandal
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Yahoo
Maxwell: Will Florida's new U.S. Attorney target corruption?
After covering politics in Florida for more than a quarter century, I've concluded that one of the biggest problems is corruption. Not just that it takes place — and boy, does it — but that so many of this state's prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies seem totally disinterested in curbing it. Some are lazy. Some are complicit. Some prefer to make big shows about arresting low-level offenders over doing the hard and feather-ruffling work required to go after the politically connected. Whatever the reason, very few Florida prosecutors have made targeting corruption a top priority. If you want proof, I have two words for you: Joel Greenberg. The guy was a one-man wrecking ball to the public trust and coffers. Yet it wasn't Florida investigators who were hot on Greenberg's trail. It was the Orlando Sentinel. This newspaper wrote story after story about the former tax collector abusing his position, handing out bogus contracts to politically connected cronies and even paying three of his former groomsmen more than $600,000. And do you know what state prosecutors did about all this? Nothing. It wasn't until the feds swooped in that Greenberg was held to account, ultimately pleading guilty to six felonies that netted him an 11-year prison sentence. That's why federal prosecutors are important. That's also why I was particularly interested in the story in Wednesday's newspaper about the new U.S. Attorney for Florida's Middle District — the guy who replaced the former federal prosecutor who went after Greenberg. I wanted to know what crimes he plans on prosecuting. Greg Kehoe's top priority, as listed in the piece from the Tampa Bay Times, were immigration crimes. He also cited fraud. Nowhere was the word 'corruption' even mentioned. Greg Kehoe outlines priorities as new Orlando-area U.S. attorney Now, that doesn't necessarily mean Kehoe plans on giving corrupt pols a pass. I emailed him Tuesday to ask him if corruption was also one of his priorities. He didn't immediately respond. But we should find out soon enough. Hardly a month goes by without some public official in Florida doing something that merits probing. And Kehoe already has a test case on his hands with former State Rep. Carolina Amesty, whom the feds have accused of fraudulently obtaining money meant for COVID relief and using it for personal expenses. Former state Rep. Carolina Amesty charged with stealing COVID-19 relief funds Kehoe actually made a point of citing pandemic-relief fraud cases as a priority. That's encouraging, since prosecutors are often as soft on white-collar, financial crimes as they are corruption. A street urchin caught stealing a TV gets the book thrown at him while a hospital exec caught stealing millions of tax dollars gets a deal. And maybe elected governor. Kehoe told the Times: 'White-collar fraud is extremely important because, frankly, it damages the fabric of society …' Amen. But Kehoe may face some serious pressure on the Amesty case, since the former GOP legislator hired Brad Bondi — the brother of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — as her attorney. And Pam Bondi is the one who gave Kehoe his new job. In fact, the Justice Department announced that the Middle District's former prosecutor — Roger Handberg, who oversaw the cases against both Amesty and Greenberg — was out of his job the same day Amesty appeared in court. Former Rep. Amesty retains well-connected lawyer: Trump AG-pick Pam Bondi's brother Now, I'd like to believe that Pam Bondi will follow every ethical letter of the law. But I'd also like to believe that my abs will get ripped by eating bacon burgers and buffalo wings. Bondi's track record as Florida's AG was well-documented. Most notably, she was caught cashing a $25,000 campaign check from Donald Trump's foundation just three days after her office said it was reviewing complaints from Floridians who said they'd been fleeced by a Trump money-making venture. No prosecutor who even cared about the appearance of impropriety would accept money from someone they'd been asked to probe. Kehoe says he and Bondi are old friends, which is how he got the job. I had a front-row seat to Pam Bondi's messy stint as attorney general | Commentary Kehoe, 70, is a former federal and international prosecutor who went after everyone from outlaw bikers to war criminals. He's also a former defense attorney, who defended everyone from corrupt politicians to accused war criminals. One of his former clients was a Croatian general who was convicted of crimes against humanity but then had those convictions overturned on appeal. Another was former Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown who was convicted on 18 fraud charges before those charges were overturned and she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. I don't know the Croatian war general. But I read every word of the lengthy federal case against Corrine Brown, and her actions stunk. Maxwell: Corrine Brown delivered … to herself, feds say You can't always judge attorneys by their clients. And Kehoe claims to want this new job prosecuting crimes across the Middle District that covers 35 counties from Northeast to Southwest Florida because he believes in 'the greater good.' Well, a big part of that is going after the bad guys, even when they're wealthy, powerful or politically connected. Sometimes there are jurisdictional issues. State crimes should obviously be pursued by state officials while federal ones should be pursued by federal ones. But sometimes, it's just a matter of which prosecutor cares. And too often in Florida, no prosecutors have. And there's plenty of shady behavior at state and local agencies where federal money is involved. The Hope Florida scandal involves Medicaid money, for instance. And a new scandal seems to pop up at Orlando's federally funded airport every few years. Readers often ask why Florida seems to have a disproportionate number of politicians doing shady things. And I usually respond: Partly because there aren't many prosecutors in this state who do much to stop it. smaxwell@ Joel Greenberg's prosecutor gets a promotion. Great. Let's prosecute some more | Commentary
