The Urban Blog

Reno: Redevelopment Agency Board Meeting, 5/14/08 2:00 PM Reno City Hall

From the staff report attachment to the 5/14/2008 Reno Redevelopment Meeting:

Summary: At the April 23, 2008 Joint meeting, staff was directed to negotiate agreements with Northern Nevada Urban Development Co., LLC, Urban Development & Management, Inc. and other parties as necessary to develop a mixed-use project anchored by retail for the area between the Reno Events Center/Ballroom, the University of Nevada, North Virginia Street and Evans Avenue. Staff was also directed to work with the developer on possible uses and/or demolition of the old Dairy Queen, located at 606 North Virginia Street and report back on the progress at the next meeting.

This is a big project, seeming to come out of nowhere, but not to those who have had their ears to the ground.  This area of town has long been looked at.  Almost 10 years ago The Cordish Company looked at developing a megaproject similar to what they had done in Baltimore's Inner Harbor area.  Murmurs have been going around for a year that an entity was acquiring parcels in the area mentioned above.  It just probably never occurred to anyone that they could be looking to transform such a large area of town.

There is some interesting potential in this area.  This blog would recommend reclaiming I-80 air rights between Virginia and Evans and also for the block west of Virginia.  The entire area between downtown and the university is in need of new life.  The University Master Plan which was completed in 2004 under the previous administration, calls for the development of a gateway lawn at the south end of the university - this seems like a drastic move which would do more harm than good in this area. 

What is truly missing from UNR is an identifiable college business & residential district.  A good college town features such a thing:  it is a developed, well traveled area with coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, and other types of specialty retail, usually plenty of residential development as well, that serves as an anchor point for the university's connection to the city in which it is located.

The area between the northern edge of downtown and the southern edge of UNR could well make a good location for a new college business district.  We'll be following this issue and reporting as it develops.

"The Americana at Brand"

NPR's Day to Day today reported on a new development in Southern California's Glendale - The Americana at Brand.  This luxury lifestyle development clusters a number of up-to-4 story buildings around a park green, with streets and curbs and a square and some clock towers - and a Cheesecake Factory and every single international chain boutique store you could imagine, with 100 condominiums and 238 apartments.

This project resembles but ain't Las Vegas' troubled Sullivan Square project, which would cluster a number of 20-something story mixed-use buildings around a park, with real streets and curbs and a square and clocks... on a superblock at the corner of the freeway and a suburban mega-avenue.

This project also resembles but ain't this blog's suggestion for Park Lane Mall's impending redevelopment.  They all have their similarities, of course - the primary similarity being their postmodern financing and construction scheme.  And it resembles but ain't The District at Victorian Square - the now canceled Sparks redevelopment project.

This is a very interesting report.  A key quote extracted from the broadcast, by project backer Rick Caruso:

"You can criticize it, and say, 'Based on the books, you shouldn't do this' — I don't know what book that would be"

- Rick Caruso, Developer, The Americana at Brand

What book would it be?  Well, anything by Jane Jacobs would be a great place to start - but happily, what Jacobs was arguing against is no longer common in the world of urban development.  Jacobs was a hard-scrabble community organizer in New York City's Greenwich Village fighting against Robert Moses' road compulsion - specifically, a project to demolish most of Greenwich Village and surrounding neighborhoods so they could build a freeway across Lower Manhattan - which would allow larger towers, presumably surrounded by parks and parking lots - to survive on the island.  The proposal was to replace the lost residential use with yet more towers surrounded by parks and parking lots - across town from the new commercial and retail uses.

Jacobs was a fierce critic of single-use zoning.  She was a fierce critic of projects which overwhelmingly rely on a single architectural metaphor.  She was a staunch proponent of a diverse building line with a diverse range of building heights and sidewalk setbacks - assuming they all had pedestrian fronting along the sidewalk.  Her little book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is a modern classic treatise of urban planning - written by an amateur.

In the broadcast segment of this story, Caruso (I'm paraphrasing) said that the people who opposed this project based on what "the books" say are also people who only studied but never did any real urban planning - an excellent zinger and a point I would make about Jacobs' amateurism.  There is only one class of urban planning professional - those who are actually involved in the business of creating new urban spaces or redefining existing urban spaces - those who do the nitty-gritty, on the ground work, of building whole new complex places.

Yet I would contend here, that even Caruso is taking an amateur's advice:  The Americana is to feature a diverse mixture of building styles and heights and is not single use and is directly adjacent to other dense, urban development such as old downtown Glendale and the more recent Glendale Galleria.

Sparks: District @ Victorian Square Cancelled

Bad news coming out of Sparks, NV.  RGJ reports today that The District at Victorian Square, a two phase, human-scale mini neighborhood slated to replace some parking lots downtown, has been canceled.  The reason?  Predictably, the current housing market and credit crisis.

Goodbye, The District.

This space glowed about the project a while back, and it's a shame to see this project put on hold.  But this project would also not have been a very large project, with buildings 5 stories tall, which were slated to become luxury condominiums.  Clearly this was intended as a huge short term profit-maker for the principals, and it would have to be, being a post modern style urban infill project covering 4 blocks.  Since we have seen how much damage can be caused by people trying to make a quick buck in real estate, now might be a good time to start assembling an alternate vision for how to do this infill right.

The suggestion we would make is to divide the 4 blocks worth of real estate up into 8 parcels and then take bids to fill in the 8 parcels.  Each bidder would only be able to build 2 contiguous parcels per bid.  This would allow for things like 8 on Center, Thoma Street Lofts, Cedar Dwellings, the Redfield Row project, and more.  Smaller projects independently designed and built as neighbors by a variety of interests means smaller budgets drawing on primarily local money, shorter timelines, and the ability to better serve a broader mix of price points.  All great hedges during times of uncertainty, and setting the erstwhile investor up for a win in the next housing boom.

Reno Passport: West Street Market Slideshow

Reno Passport's Blog is becoming a must-read and has recently posted a slideshow of the progress being made on the West Street Market under construction in downtown Reno.  Can't wait to see the market when it's finally open!

Carson City: Open Space A Growth Industry

If you're interested in tracking news about Carson City, I recommend checking out News Carson City on a regular basis.  Dave Morgan appears to own a police scanner and uses it - and shows up with a camera - on a regular basis.  And he's figured out this internet thing, and has streaming video of the stuff he reports on.  He also covers city government, and Carson City's ongoing efforts to plan for its future growth.

The topic of Carson City's growth will often turn to open space.  Much has been made of this issue, especially in Nevada.  For what has made Nevada special, in the eyes of many, is how free access has been to the state's backcountry - that territory which is the property of the federal government but which you, as a citizen of the United States, have a right to use, if only a commonlaw right.

As Nevada grows, more of this land is being gobbled up by the development that must accompany growth.  And so it goes in many cases like this, that the backcountry disappears to be replaced by insufficient city parks and such.  Carson City has done something unique for Nevada - it has a dedicated source of tax revenue specifically allocated for purchasing open space.  News Carson City has done a great job covering aspects of this policy that you don't see reported on by other media.

Bystanders and observers might make something of Carson City's current declining sales & use tax environment.  But some business is growing in CC - the business of acquiring private lands for public use.

Now, the city is coming together to determine what to do with its new asset.  Other places have the backcountry -- Carson City is soon to have the forecountry and how it approaches usage designations, signage and many other qualities is going to determine how effective it is in using this great resource to its advantage.  A lot of what Carson City is preserving is its river corridor. 

Carson City includes a huge chunk of the Carson River, but since the city is not oriented toward the river, most people don't know how prominent the river is in the city's geography.  All this open space acquisition is thus giving the city what no other city like it has - an opportunity to preserve this natural amenity in its natural state, connected to other natural settings of hills and mountains to the east and west of the city proper.

Carson City may end up demonstrating what is required in parks & rec managers for future growth in other communities.  At recent meetings in Carson City, people turned out in support of equestrian and OHV use in the same wilderness areas, and basically advocated for extensive signage and good maps to make sure folks know where they can and can't be for the activity they're pursuing.  Attendees have also commented on a need to maintain a healthy, natural flood plain on the river.

In the end, CC's preservation of these lands may lead to growth once more, as people flock to the area seeking an example of a place that has acquired open space, worked hard to preserve historical resources, and worked to turn its downtown around following the arrival of a bypass freeway.  These are things that are happening all over, and if Carson City can show us an example for how to do it right, we should heed that example whenever possible.  Here's wishing them the best of luck.

News Carson City stories of interest:

Trying to figure out what to do with the Silver Saddle Ranch

Getting the “plain” truth about building too close to the Carson River and a more “common sense” approach to keeping the river health

Growth Out There

Lately Northern Nevada has seen two projects receive the approval of the City of Reno, two projects which are pretty controversial and are indicative of a broader set of problems the city is trying to solve, and really, what that means, is that people need to speak up, but speak up in full context.  That's done here, below the jump.

Reno: Municipal Programming Takes a Hit on The Internet

The City of Reno has long had an excellent web presence.  In particular, the past two or three versions of their website have all been excellent, the current one is very beautiful and content-rich.

For a very long time, The Media Center, aka SNCAT, has provided a wonderful resource in the Truckee Meadows community in the form of a bookable studio that ordinary people can use to produce public access programming, and also by serving to CATV and Internet the municipal programming provided by Reno, Sparks, and Washoe County.  These three government channels all offer a range of content which should allow an attentive person to keep up with the business of their local governments.  SNCAT appears to have a great system in place for (a) live streaming, (b) archival of past programming, and (c) presentation of all that content.

So it was with some surprise that I noticed the disappearance of Reno from SNCAT's internet streaming website, sncatstream.com, shortly after the launch of Reno's current website design.  Right after the launch of the new site, in fact, Reno was praised right here for its new website, with particular attention given to the video page, which highlighted Reno 13 programming.

Of course, the list page for Reno's programming, and the calendar page for Reno's programming, continued to exist on SNCAT's site, and were frequently updated, to boot.  So it was easy to stay up to date.  All the content, in fact, became an invaluable source of post fodder.  Regular readers can most likely recall council meetings reported on here, for example.  Municipal programming is a great source of information for those highlighting the bread and butter business of city government.

But over a month ago, new content from Reno 13 stopped appearing on sncatstream.com.  Inquiries to various places finally provided me with a response from someone with the city, who indicated that programming would be updated on the Reno 13 shows page, and that they are currently looking at how to archive city council meetings.

Really.  Did you know, that right in the Truckee Meadows, there's a service that already archives municipal programming for on-demand viewing?  That it's the same organization that has been doing it for the city for years?  How ridiculous can you get? 

Write SNCAT a check, Reno.  Get the archives working again, get the live stream working again, and focus your otherwise excellent web team on making the city website even better, maybe work with SNCAT to develop an embeddable player like what you find on YouTube.  Duplicating SNCAT's work isn't helping anyone here.

Reno: Parking Requirements Are An Outmoded Concept

Reno News & Review reports on a disturbing situation at a CalAve eatery, Voila Cafe and Catering.  After following a City suggestion to turn one of its parking spaces into an outdoor dining venue, the business is now one parking space short of their city mandated parking requirement and as such, has been issued a cease and desist order.  Another unsettling detail mentioned in the article is that the business would have to pay an additional amount in excess of $4,000 to actually use the one parking space they abandoned for outdoor dining, as their business license does not cover outdoor dining.

Parking is rarely a problem in the not-exactly-bustling California Ave district.  A good many buildings and businesses have their own parking lots for themselves and their tenants only, but currently there are no pay lots, which is fine, because street parking is not that hard to come by nearby.

A district like CalAve should depend on its street parking to keep its businesses fed with customers during the day, and to encourage businesses to open, should not have onerous parking requirements for business licensees.  If CalAve is going to see business pick up and transform it into the kind of neighborhood it wants to be, more pedestrian activity is going to have to occur.  This pedestrian activity occurs most naturally in the beginning through the walk from the car to the business and back, a serendipitous time of discovery.

A long-term plan for the district should involve the identification of a site for a pay lot or garage to serve area businesses.  Parking for 20 - 30 cars in a central location such as the dirt lot on the east end of California would be an easy revenue generator for the owner and a boon to nearby businesses and attractions.

In the meantime, Voila's business license should be reinstated with reduced parking requirements.  There's no point in keeping a business closed over parking, with so much nearby street parking generally available.

Reno: Baseball Groundbreaking

The Urban Blog had the chance to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the new ballpark downtown today.  In the middle of a muddy field described by those who had seen it as "a swamp yesterday", a baseball diamond was striped in pretty much exactly where the baseball diamond will be when the stadium portion of the project is completed next year.  At second base was a lectern and seats for the guests of honor, all of whom spoke.

Stadium District Conceptual Rendering

The speakers were Stuart Katzoff of SK Baseball, Rick Parr, general manager Tucson Sidewinders, State Senators Bill Raggio and Randolph Townsend, Washoe County Commission Chair Bob Larkin, Mayor Bob Cashell, Pacific Coast League President Branch Rickey, and the CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Jeff Moorad.

All these speakers had a lot to say including some off-putting things such as choice barbs for the naysayers and cheesy jokes about mafia-style executions, but the message that came through overwhelmingly through the comments was one of a vision for downtown Reno's future centered around a triumph of idealism over skepticism, about a future where people who mean what they say and put their money where their mouths are, come in with the right intentions and create an environment where families will want to live and play.

Baseball District Conceptual Ground Plan

All in all, a day Reno has been waiting for for a long time.  This project looks to repair a long-neglected section of the city, and taken alongside other positive developments like Montage, the Urban Market, Powning District and 4th Street TOD Corridor, much work is underway to build a new future for Reno that reflects the best of its past - that bustling town on the river where something was always happening - the undeniable, irresistible feeling that led to the coining of the slogan "The Biggest Little City In The World".  I for one can't wait.

Reno: Urban Market Moving Forward

The Reno Redevelopment Agency meeting today (January 30, 2008) focused on two major subjects:  The so-called "Urban Market" and the relocation of Fire Station #1.  We'll get to that, and more, here.