In 2008, developer Rick L. Burton’s company boasted in a news release that it had out-bid Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. for the right to develop a private air terminal at McCarran International Airport.
The $192 million air terminal project touted by Burton’s firm never panned out. And on Wednesday, Burton personally filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in Las Vegas, listing just $6,546 in assets against a whopping $310 million in liabilities.
The filing came after Burton, his associated companies and former partners were hit with numerous lawsuits and judgments over unpaid bills and defaulted loans.
Burton is well known in the Phoenix area, where he was an executive at Scottsdale-based Rightpath Limited Development Group and associated company Lux Air Jet Center.
Those companies and their partners said in 2008 they had developed aviation, mixed-use, retail, office and residential communities throughout the Southwest valued at more than $3 billion.
But as the recession set in, Rightpath ran into financial troubles, particularly at a project at Glendale Municipal Airport in the Phoenix area.
The Arizona Republic reported in 2010 that Rightpath’s effort to transform the Glendale airport into a corporate jet center had faltered. The Republic also reported Rightpath’s development effort at McCarran in Las Vegas had been canceled by mutual agreement with the airport.
The deal called for Rightpath to pay McCarran $4.4 million per year for 30 years to lease land for its project, which would cost another $60 million to build.
Lawsuit records show that, at the time, Rightpath intended to develop a terminal and hangar that would be operated as a club for a select group of private aircraft owners.
Rightpath’s position is that it pulled out of the project when Clark County, owner of the airport, insisted all aircraft stored at the hangar would have to be owned by Rightpath, the records show.
The bankruptcy filing says Burton lately has been working as chief operating officer at a Las Vegas company called Sandbags LLC, which says it provides sandbags on an ''on-site, on-demand'' basis.
He makes $10,000 per month, the filing says.
Burton’s liabilities include some $6.3 million owed to the Internal Revenue Service for taxes and penalties, nearly $383,000 in income taxes, penalties and interest owed to the Arizona Department of Revenue, and scores of debts owed to banks and other creditors for the Glendale airport project and other deals.
Like a similar mammoth personal bankruptcy filing by Las Vegas developer Bill Plise involving $506.5 million in debt, many of Burton’s debts involve personal guarantees for business loans.
The largest creditors appear to be the state of Arizona, owed $135 million for a land purchase deal; Mortgages Ltd., of Peoria, Ariz., owed $109 million for a business loan; and the city of Glendale, owed $20 million for what is described as a Main Street Development bond agreement. Main Street was to be a resort and mixed-use development but had stalled by 2010, the Republic reported.
Locally, creditors in Burton’s filing include the homeowners association at the luxury MacDonald Highlands development in Henderson; NV Energy for a past-due $5,064 electric bill for Burton's former home in MacDonald Highlands; and Midfirst Bank of Oklahoma City, owed nearly $819,000 for a defaulted mortgage against the home, which was once valued at $1.5 million.
Other local creditors include law firms Black & LoBello and Holland & Hart; and the now-disbanded law firm Kummer Kaempfer Bonner Renshaw & Ferrario.
Messages for comment were left for Burton and his attorney on the bankruptcy filing.