The Urban Blog

V&T Railroad May Run This Summer

Via Around Carson via Nevada Appeal, comes a report that the V&T Railroad Commission may ask the V&T Railroad Company in Virginia City to operate a train from Virginia City to Mound House beginning this summer.

The story has a bit of history.  Originally the V&T Commission had selected a now defunct out of state operator to run the completed project.  But the V&T project funding has stalled out a bit.  The track through to Mound House is very likely to be ready for trains this summer, and a new bridge over Highway 50 is well along.

Meanwhile, Tom Gray has operated a train from Virginia City to Silver City for quite a while now.  It’s possibly not a terrific business but he has certainly been doing it for awhile.  He has a diesel train for when his steam engine is in the shop, and has managed to run every year since he opened.  The Commission apparently is investigating taking over the V&T Company to run the train.  The Commission would handle maintenance costs and take 5% of ticket revenues under the proposed agreement.

There is concern on the part of some that the V&T Company doesn’t have the money or people to run the 11 mile run.  It currently runs 2.5 miles.

The agreement should use part of V&T Commission’s money to invest in V&T Company to get it capable of operating the train to Mound House this season.  A large parking lot should be built in Mound House.  Mound House can start thinking about the construction of a western themed village adjacent to the rail depot.  There are already antique shops, a candy store, and bars in Mound House, not to mention the brothels.  A little work to create a pedestrian mall, maybe even with a dirt road and boardwalks, would be a good investment.

VC has a treacherous (Geiger Grade) or overly long (through Mound House) drive to get up there for tourists visiting Reno.  And parking is tight during the busy season.  Silver City, the current endpoint of the V&T, doesn’t have much going on.  So it only makes sense that the V&T could actually take up the job of operating transportation to get people up the hill and into town from their cars, and back down the hill to their cars.  Mound House’s little Old West mall would be something to do while folks wait for the train.

If the Commission wants to look at taking over the operations of the V&T Company eventually anyway, it will need to invest at some point to expand the operations suitably.  Since the funding is stalled for the project, it makes sense to get the project operating now.  It is well and good to plan on running the train the eventual proposed distance of 18 miles to Carson City.  Getting the 11 mile route to Mound House operating this season will allow the Commission and Company to get some experience running a longer route down the hill, raise much needed revenue, and help develop a model for operating in the future.

Reno: Baseball Developers Want Some Money

Via RGJ yesterday:  The developers of the downtown baseball stadium and if we’re lucky, the entertainment district, want The City to cough up a million dollars per year for 10 years to help them secure financing in this tough credit market to help get their entertainment district built within 24 months of the stadium opening in April, 2009.  They cite cost overruns on the project proposal in addition to the tight credit market.

At least one thing doesn’t make any sense:  commodity prices on steel and concrete are down right now, leading one to wonder where the cost overruns have come from to push this thing $20 million over budget.

Still, I commented on Downtown Makeover yesterday:

The City is into this for $18MIL in property tax rebates over a 20 year period and just had to borrow money from the sewer fund to meet its obligations to the RTC which would in turn help it meet its obligations to the developer of the baseball entertainment district.  Those are the breaks, and it's understandable that the baseball developers would want to get moving on this second phase of the development which I assume is for the Mizpah block.  In that case I'm not adamantly opposed to subsidies to get the second phase underway ASAP as the combined district will be a great draw for the downtown area but the terms of the agreement should be opened up with clear milestones identified for when the citicenter property would be turned over to the baseball developers based on economic conditions at the time (primarily related to the credit market) and performance of the second phase.  By asking The City to put up in essence "good faith" money to help secure financing, The City is being brought in as an equity stakeholder, a highly leveraged one at that, and consequently deserves a little bit of leverage of its own.  The baseball developers have shown no reason for distrust.  That ballpark is well on its way to being completed in time.  But with this new financial ask from the developers, The City is being put into a position greater than that of enabler, which is that of financier.  Since this represents a change in terms of the arrangement as was agreed upon, the whole thing needs to be opened up to provide some indemnity for The City.  Just my opinion of course.

The reasoning behind this idea has something to do with tertiary community benefit.  The City is in the position of having to acquire the existing downtown transit center to turn over to the baseball developers.  The RTC is in the position of getting ready to start a capital project, the new transit center, at a time when they claim to be $3 million in the hole on their sales tax receipts that subsidize the existing bus service, meaning up to 25% cuts.  If The City owns the existing transit center indefinitely, they can offer RTC to keep the transit center open until sales tax collection picks up.  The RTC can use the new transit center funds to keep the bus service afloat for a couple of years.  The community benefits by getting a baseball stadium and adjacent new restaurants and bars and keeping its bus service at today’s levels until the economy comes back.  When the economy comes back, the developer can finance the redevelopment of the existing transit center, and RTC can bond new funds for the construction of the new transit center.

Or they can just put phase 2 on hold for 6 months following the completion of the ballpark and see if the credit markets have begun to thaw by then.  It’s possible that’s what will happen.

On Las Vegas

I am in Las Vegas at the moment.  My job sends me to Las Vegas about once a year and it is never a trip I particularly look forward to.  Like most Northern Nevadans, to call my relationship with Sin City “Love-Hate” would be to imply the existence of the former.  Still, it does nobody any good to go around disparaging other people, and so after many years of yammering on to anyone who would listen about how much I despised the place, that was finally out of my system and thankfully, it was time for me to begin to contemplate what it is about Las Vegas that makes the place what it is.

A general hypothesis along these lines has been forming inside my brain this trip and it is composed of several milestones that represent key principles in place in Las Vegas that, for the purposes of this blog at least, can be used to cast light on the dichotomy between Clark County’s way and the rest of Nevada’s way.  They are:  1.  Las Vegas is a fundamentally 20th Century City, 2.  which was the nearest whistlestop to Hoover Dam, 3.  which began to benefit tremendously economically from the water and power Hoover Dam provided, 4.  which really enjoyed success once it got a taste of it, and 5.  which was willing to do anything it would take from that point on to continue to be successful, including being downwind of above ground nuclear testing and using whoever’s money would fund the thing to build casinos the likes of which the world had never seen.

Everywhere one goes in Las Vegas one is reminded of the fact that Las Vegas is a fundamentally 20th century city.  I have looked long and hard for any evidence that horse-drawn carriages ever plied the streets of Las Vegas.  It appears almost impossible to find this evidence.  Of course we know horse-drawn carriages did once ply the streets of Las Vegas.  But the urban environment, the fabric of Las Vegas was so comprehensively adapted to automobiles that today wherever one casts one’s gaze one feels as if looking across a highway or a parking lot.  Sidewalks are 3 feet wide in probably greater than 90% of the city, a city which by and large isn’t really the city of its own name but which is unincorporated territory outside of the political influence of the namesake city.

When Hoover Dam came around, the real deal of the 20th century attitude was embodied in concrete and steel that harnessed the power and water of a mighty river to provide both for an entire region which would otherwise not be able to sustain large populations at all.  The real deal of the 20th century attitude is that man’s power over nature through the imposition of technology can produce for man whatever man requires.  This had always been an aspect of the human condition, of course.  But in the 20th century it became possible for the first time to mobilize such large quantities of materials and labor as to create projects like Hoover Dam.

The power and water that the dam generated were first employed in the processing of  magnesium, an enterprise which created 15,000 jobs.  The power and water of the Hoover Dam, combined with the large size of the Las Vegas Valley, must have been an intoxicating mix to those early enterprising individuals who would build the city.

Success tastes good.  When the Army Air Corps established Nellis Air Force Base in 1942, a pattern which had begun with the construction of Hoover Dam was well established for a way Las Vegas could get that success:  other people’s money.  In the case of these early projects, it was the federal government’s money, to be precise.  Las Vegas celebrated its willingness to do what it takes to secure prosperity from outside investment, and so nuclear bombs were detonated in the desert north of town for 12 years.

During this time when Las Vegas was learning this pattern, men of vision who had been criminals wherever they tried to ply the trade of running games of chance found they could run legitimate businesses in Nevada (or, during the early years, at least not be criminals)  Where in Reno they would find a civic culture aimed at restricting what was considered a necessary evil, which constantly confounded the ability for these men to realize their visions, in Las Vegas they would find cheap land and an extremely willing local population.  It didn’t matter where the money was coming from.  And history has been kind to that attitude, as the mob gave way to corporate operators and even today cranes loom on the skyline as an incredible number of vertical mega-projects take form.

This devil-may-care attitude toward the actions required in the service of prosperity is the defining characteristic of Las Vegas, and the side effects of this attitude in a material, spiritual and intellectual sense are the lessons of Las Vegas.  It has served the city well.  At this time of economic uncertainty the question most prominent in my mind:  Is Las Vegas at a turning point?  Having reached its current size is growth to level off here, and new 21st century patterns to be established?  I’ll be watching to see.