The Urban Blog

The Myth of the Shrinking Pie

There is an argument to be found in some internet comments about the gaming market in Reno right now which goes like this:  Now is not a good time to build or open new  hotels and/or casinos.  The reason is that they steal business from existing properties.  They make a smaller and shrinking pie divided into smaller pieces percentagewise for everyone.

It’s logical unless you consider something:  the effect of competition.  The way to grow the size of the pie is to invest.  An argument could be made that a more appropriate pie to look at is the pie representing in the total size of investment going in to Reno right now.

One reason why this is a hard argument to make is because there’s another truism in Reno: “gaming is not the future for Reno.”  What’s funny is that truism is usually followed up by another one:  “we need to attract investment in new industries.”

A good environment for new investment is a good environment for investment – period.  It’s an environment where things don’t sit and rot.  Imagine that you are the CEO of a company looking to open operations in Reno or an entrepreneur looking to start a new, cutting-edge business there.  A good environment for business is a place anybody would be proud to take a business visitor.  How do you feel about taking your visitor downtown?

There are plenty of properties right along Virginia Street and within a two-block radius that need some investment.  Reno needs to be able to compete not just as a visitor destination for those tourists who are still coming (a market that should still be nurtured) but also for those visitors who are in town with the intent to conduct any legitimate and desirable business.  The time for that investment is now.

In Defense of “A Little West of Center”

It’s been hard to keep from talking about the obsession (a healthy one at the moment, fine with me) that Reno has with its image at the moment.

The community seems to have overreacted incredibly negatively to the idea of the tourism slogan being “A Little West of Center” as brought forth by the agency that did a lot of good brand research for the RSCVA lately.  This has been praised elsewhere and includes a new logo, which is a good logo and the concept “Reno-Tahoe USA” is a great concept as a starting point.

In fact, with just the logo and Reno-Tahoe USA, the RSCVA is positioned well to craft a range of regional marketing taglines targeted at specific visitor demographics that highlight the diverse mix of destinations and venues Western Nevada has to offer.

However, the outrage, which seems overdone on the part of many people, over (the rejected) “A Little West of Center” slogan is really unbelievable.  People’s reaction:  overwhelmingly “What is that supposed to mean?” is always played to paint the advocate into a corner.  Mayor Bob Cashell’s quip “What do they mean, Virginia Street?” was actually funny but still I think the aversion to it comes from people naturally, in their mind, associating the phrase with its source “A little left of center”, which many leaders in and around the Reno area may be repulsed to believe anyone would think of their area.

Reno wears its relative conservatism on its sleeve a lot, which isn’t really a bad thing except when it provokes knee-jerk reactions like this.

Facts are, it’s a pretty socially liberal place, with plenty to do for drinkers, gamblers, gay people, artists, and really anyone who wishes to live in an unconventional manner.  But the conservative “out west” attitude that prevails in the enjoyment of going out in the mountains and shooting at cans, or wanting to keep base costs of government services low, pervades and infuses a natural skepticism of pretty much all of the advancements and trappings of modernity even as it seeks to take advantage of those advancements.

Hey, it’s what I think of when I think “A Little West of Center”  Frankly, it would have done Reno ok.

I’m happy to not be the only person writing about Reno’s twitchy attitude.  Gay Rodeo of God Hates Reno busts forth with the proclamation that:

“Nope, we’re just assholes apparently.  Countless people I’ve encountered that either move here or visit mention this, the tenseness, the bravado, the needing to prove… something… in this town.  I mean, look at this website.”

One day I was walking across Liberty Street on Sierra headed down to California Avenue from downtown proper, and some guy in a pickup truck honked at me because I wasn’t walking fast enough!  In the crosswalk!  While the walk sign was lit.  I like to imagine him imagining himself being associated by power of suggestion with a bunch of tree huggin’ hippies thanks to this slogan created by some San Francisco elites who misjudged his town by way of said slogan.

It did set people off, so just as well that it’s gone.  What comes next is anybody’s guess.  But at the end of the day, I’m not going to be the only one scratching my head on occasion when I witness things like this, and saying to myself , “What in blazes?”  Perhaps one day Reno will collectively take a good deep breath and relax for a second.  Until then we observers will have plenty to marvel at.

Please, No Morality Police

Apparently Councilwoman Sharon Zadra wants a “code of conduct” that can be enforced on downtown Reno’s plazas. 

A code of conduct for a space such as a public plaza is something that seems not only completely unnecessary but also perhaps unenforceable.  There are already laws regarding what is and is not acceptable behavior in public places.  People can be arrested or removed for those things.

Reno’s plazas – currently I’m thinking of two:  West St Plaza (where I just had a sandwich) and City Hall, are bustling havens of activity especially on beautiful summer weekend days when there are people out enjoying the river, skateboarders, people on bicycles, friends and families walking around having a good time, enjoying the restaurants and shops that line the area.

Occasionally with the territory comes some profanity or a loud noise – and let’s face it, Reno’s got some characters.  Tattoos, piercings, age, weather, and just plain mental illness populate downtown with a varied and colorful crowd.  Rarely on the plazas, however, does anything even remotely approaching dangerous happen.

This code of conduct thing should not even make it to a staff report – but it will.  Things like it and the ban on open containers downtown are a symptom of what I would argue is a dangerous instinct that is thankfully not always followed.  Still it is an instinct to create a more “ideal” or “safe” scene or environment.  It’s understandable to want to have a safe, ideal environment – but going about “having” that the wrong way could backfire.

A town that wants to have people come to party in the streets shouldn’t make it illegal to party in the streets.  A town that wants a colorful, dedicated group of people committed to creating street life shouldn’t chase them out of the spaces they enliven.  Nothing is less safe or ideal than a dead zone created of an area that was once intensively used for a purpose but which is now not used for any real purpose.  It is left to the reader to connect cause and effect.

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.

It’s OK to Laugh (But only if it’s funny)

Cartoon by Erik Holland of Citizens for Sensible Growth