Crowdreporting: How do you see Reno’s casinos in the present and future of our downtown?
Substack in which we ask for you to share your experiences, insights, anecdotes as casino workers, patrons, occasional visitors ...
While we’ve focused lots of our coverage in recent years on Jacobs Entertainment and the slow 4th street jentrification with a j, we’ve had less reporting recently about downtown proper and how other casinos impact our collective future.
There’s been derision, and rightly so, of the Row’s fake facades with pretend exteriors of fantasyland stores. Reno is allocating a quarter million dollars of yet to be spent COVID money to remedy some of these dead spots, while trying to encourage bikes and scooters to come through Virginia street with a dizzying array of traffic barriers, while different cycle tracks are argued about, but the problems go much further.
Many Reno residents say they avoid the area entirely, which during the day still mostly consists of the unhoused trying to survive, ambassadors going on patrols and skateboarders getting to play at the Believe Plaza, while a few tourists take selfies in front of our brittle space whales.
Casinos host nice street festivals occasionally but their business model is to keep patrons inside, and giving them easy car access. Casino voices are well represented on the Downtown Reno Partnership so called Business Improvement District with Tony Marini, VP of Operations and Guest Experience at the ROW, the board’s vice chair, and Jeff Siri, the President and CEO of Club Cal Nevada, also on that influential body.
The problem with BIDs is in the name: it’s all about business, and not a community’s well-being.
Local casino magnates are also extremely active behind the scenes writing letters and emails, having meetings and putting pressure on city staff and council members whenever their downtown interests are put into question. Come campaign time their donations to their favorite candidates are more than generous.
What about ordinary people, though, the casino workers, the regular patrons, the occasional visitors, the neighborhood dwellers, the new arrivals, the local history buffs, what do you think of the role still operating casinos will and/or should have in our downtown’s future?
We’d love to compile an article with different thoughts, experiences and anecdotes as we’ve done concerning other pivotal issues facing our community. So please leave us a comment here if you have a few minutes. It can be done anonymously or with your name, up to you.
As always, thanks for your support and contributing to this collective reporting project.
Our Reporting Highlights This Week
We feature Make the Road, opening a new office in the area to help immigrants and the undocumented.
Our podcast is a farewell to former reporter Kingkini Sengupta.
We started a social media series called Places of Reno, including a video and narration tour of Wells Ave.
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Housing is a right not a luxury. My husband and I are current displaced and living with family after our landlord if almost 4 years said they wanted to sell the home. Turns out they didn’t sell and simply upped the rent. To move into another rental we were looking at paying $6-9K to move in between deposits and fees. We work, have kids and help take care of my disabled father. Renting used to be feasible when you either couldn’t or didn’t want to buy. Now renting is just as bad as buying with more and more landlords requiring higher credit scores and significant deposit fees, security deposits, first and last month rent. If we don’t fix this we will have more and more people who simply have nowhere to go.