Highland Park’s Marc Bortz would have had a field day on “What’s My Line,” the old television show where a panel tried to guess what each contestant did for a living.
Bortz, 29, looks and dresses like an accountant, avoids alcohol and drugs like a fundamentalist preacher and talks about the theater with the passion of a playwright. But–drumroll, please–Bortz is really the millionaire owner of three glitzy suburban nightclubs called, of all things, Vertigo, Paladrome and Venus.
High school friend Jenee Delott, also 29, tries to explain. “Marc was always entrepreneurial. He started his first business, a lox box delivery service called The Breakfast Club, at 15. He’s so creative, he’s certainly the kind of person who could design a nightclub people would want to go to. He’s just not the sort of person who would go there himself. I guess you could call him a contradiction.”
To his father, Joe, 55, Marc is more like a happy confluence of traits that appeared just in time to take over the business that he and his brother, Mike, a schoolteacher, had started on a whim more than 20 years ago.
Joe Bortz said, “My grandfather had a pharmaceutical company, which my father took over and then I took over after him. It’s a family tradition. In the early 1970s I bought an ice cream parlor on Montrose in Chicago as a hobby, moved in some jukeboxes and called it Dr. Jazz. It was such a hit my brother left teaching to help with the accounting.”
Before long, the brothers had opened Sally’s Stage, at Western and Devon Avenues, a family eatery known for its roller-skating waitresses, and five Blue Suede Shoes nightclubs built around a ’50s theme.
“Mike and I never thought beyond three or four clubs,” Joe said. “We saw owning nightclubs as a way to make a living. But Marc hopes to own 50 or 60 clubs. For him, it’s a way of life.”
In many ways, Dr. Jazz and Sally’s Stage were young Marc Bortz’s life. His mother had died when he was 3, and Marc’s relationship with his father’s second wife (they are now divorced and Marc has a half-sister, Mikhael, a 20-year-old college student) never grafted, so Marc went everywhere with his father.
“I grew up in that ice cream parlor,” Marc said. “I started scooping ice cream before my arm was long enough to reach the bottom of the container. Once I fell in.” Later Marc was a dishwasher and busboy at Sally’s Stage.
“When I was negotiating for a new deal, I’d take Marc along,” Joe said. “Marc was always small for his age, and people looked puzzled, wondering why I’d brought a kid. By the time he was 11 or 12, they were listening to him. Marc has all the traits necessary for this business: He’s fast with numbers, he has great ideas, and he’s good with people.”
Marc is also fast enough to know those traits would adapt to any number of careers.
Sitting on a leather couch in his modestly decorated office over a bank in downtown Highland Park, he talked about his unlikely status. “When I went to college, at Emory University in Atlanta, I thought of majoring in pre-med or art history and finally settled on economics.”
Although he spent a year abroad, studying first in Spain and then at Cambridge, Marc finished Emory in three years, then spent nine months trading commodities before joining the Bortz Entertainment Group in 1990. By 1991, Uncle Mike had returned to teaching, Joe had “retired” to the back office, and Marc was company president.
“Am I a typical nightclub owner? Probably not,” Marc said. “Did you see this picture of me?” Marc pointed to a framed cover of the June 1995 Nightclub & Bar magazine, where Marc, looking like your kid brother out with a borrowed ID, grins from a stool at the Venus bar. He’s flanked by gorgeous female models, and behind him are glimpses of the nightclub’s decor: pink curtains, gold trim and faux marble replicas of the Venus statue.
“Once a club is finished, I don’t fit in real well,” he said. Marc and his father don’t drink or smoke, and in high school Marc was a leader of the anti-drug movement. “But I love to build things, and designing a nightclub gives me something to show for all that hard work. I enjoy the strategy of finding a niche no one else occupies, and I enjoy putting deals together.”
Marc’s boyhood friend and former business partner, Todd Cahan, 28, said, “The thrill for Marc is the entertainment aspect. When we were 21, we opened a bar called Bermuda Bob’s in Joliet together. We brought in some palm trees and put sand on the floor. Marc decided we should have a show, so he hired a choreographer to teach the staff to dance to `Wipe Out,’ by the Fat Boys.”
Later, Marc moved on to even greater spectacles–spraying the dance floor and dancers with a foam machine at Vertigo, arranging for a race between barstools and designing one wall of Paladrome in Palatine with a semi-truck crashing through it. Todd, who moved back into his own family’s business, a car dealership, said he believes that Marc’s entertainment talents “will go out even further, and someday he’ll be making movies.”
Marc agreed that opening a nightclub is a lot like the theater business. “The employees are the cast,” he said, “and furnishing it becomes set decoration. How much we spend depends on how long a run we’ll have. Like plays, nightclub concepts don’t last forever, and we know that after a few years, we’ll have to close it and mount a new production.”
For now, the adult clubs are so popular that many couples, such as Despo Tickner, 26, of Schaumburg, and her fiance, go there every weekend. “Venus has more of a downtown feel,” Tickner said. “The crowd is mostly twentysomething, and you can wear dressy, fun clothes. Vertigo is more alternative, laid back, and the dance floor is always packed. I’ve been going there for years, and I never get sick of it.”
Marc watched his father and uncle close down or sell off Dr. Jazz, Sally’s Stage and Blue Suede Shoes locations, and he and Todd eventually closed Bermuda Bob’s, so he has no illusions that Vertigo, which he opened in Palatine in 1992 and Venus, in the One Schaumburg Place Mall, which opened in 1994, will last forever.
“Some club owners have their egos wrapped up in a concept. The difference is that when interest in one of our clubs wanes, I don’t take it personally,” he said.
But Marc is personally invested in Paladrome, his father said. “When Marc first talked about opening a no-alcohol club for kids, everyone in the business said it couldn’t be done without a ton of problems. But Marc was determined, and now people come in from all over the U.S. to see it,” Joe said.
Marc still looks like a high school boy when he talks about the teen club he opened in 1994. “I wanted to give kids a place where they could be safe and have fun. When you’re in high school, you get labeled. At Paladrome, kids can get out of that box, because they’re meeting kids from all over, from Highland Park to Buffalo Grove to Niles. I certainly wish we had a place like that when I was in high school.”
Palatine Deputy Police Chief Jack McGregor said the club has become a good neighbor. “When it first opened,” he said, “we arrested some kids who had liquor in the parking lot. But once we got our message across, it’s been pretty quiet. The staff there runs a tight ship.”
Tammy Dessert, 19, of Palatine said she has been going to Paladrome every week since moving to the community last summer and loves the dancing and the people she has met but complained that the admission fee of $11 is high. “Other teen clubs charge as much,” she said, “but they at least provide a free buffet. If there’s pizza or something at Paladrome, you have to pay extra for it.”
Marc Bortz defended the high cover charge as realistic. During the school year, the club is open only two nights a week and is less profitable than his other ventures. “Kids have to pay $7.50 to go to a movie, and it only lasts a couple of hours. At Paladrome, they can be entertained until 4 a.m.,” he said.
When Bortz has the time, he goes boating on Lake Michigan; he has a slip in Belmont Harbor and has just ordered a 40-foot Sun Seeker power boat. He and his father also own and exhibit all over the country a collection of almost 50 “dream” cars, one-of-a-kind autos of the future that were designed for displays at car shows.
As for the future, Marc smiled again. “I have a girlfriend, and I’d like to get married someday. When I am a father, I’d like to be able to spend a lot of time with my children, and this is no lifestyle for a family. Who knows? In a few years, I may decide to do something entirely different.”
THE LOWDOWN ON THE CLUBS
Club Vertigo, 1190 E. Dundee Rd., Palatine. Phone 847-776-0400. Cover charge: $3, higher for special events. Age: 21 and older. Hours: 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday. (Available for private parties Monday and Tuesday.) Special features: Modern and progressive music, deejays, sometimes retro bands. New Year’s Eve: Admission $10, includes dinner buffet, champagne toast, favors, remote live radio broadcast.
Venus, One Schaumburg Place Shopping Center, 601 E. Martingale Rd., Schaumburg. Phone 847-413-1600. Age: 21 and older. Cover charge: $4, higher for special events. Hours: 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesday; 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Available for private parties on Monday. Special features: Italian-style tapas. Deejays play Top 40 on Fridays; on Saturdays club becomes Medusa’s World Headquarters, featuring the best from underground Chicago night life. New Year’s Eve: Admission $13; dinner buffet. Flashback New Year’s Eve will feature best dance music from 1975-85.
Paladrome, 555 E. Dundee Rd., Palatine. Phone: 847 358-0330. Age: All ages, caters to 20 and under. Cover: $11. Hours: 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Open Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday nights during holidays and summer. Available for parties Monday and Tuesday. Special features: No alcohol. Offers “smart” drinks, which use herbs and other ingredients to provide a “natural high.” Cutting-edge music, modern dance to alternative and underground, some rave style. Elevated dance platforms. New Year’s Eve: Admission $20, includes dinner buffet and party favors.
