In Defense of Keeping A Local Street All Public, While Missing Jenny Brekhus on Our Council

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

Jan 08, 2025

While we took photos of Stevenson Street ahead of its future being back in play, a resident who was in the process of moving told us: “you know, if it’s posted, that means it’s already a done deal.”

That’s a sad state of affairs.

Agenda Item C1 at Wednesday’s City of Reno council meeting is a “request for the abandonment of the right-of-way totaling ±32,000 square feet of Stevenson Street located between West First Street and West Second Street. The proposed abandonment area is bordered by Mixed- Use Downtown Powning District (MD-PD) zoning with a Master Plan land use designation of Downtown Mixed-Use (DT-MU). [Ward 1].”

At Our Town Reno, one of the themes we keep looking into is the unfortunate disappearance of public space.

Privatizing part of a street for the benefit of ECI Riviera 2, Kromer Investments and their Mod apartments is part of that trend. “Let’s Keep a Cute, Convenient Street All Public in Downtown Reno,” was the headline of one of our Citizen’s Forum contributions last year.

“As it’s currently set up, Stevenson street is convenient for cyclists and cars to get in and out of downtown Reno,” we wrote.

“We see this potential abandonment as part of a trend in Reno by the current majority on City Council to privatize public assets and allow more and more parking.”

In favor is Kathleen Taylor, whose ward this is now in, after she won the election for the reconfigured downtown ward, replacing the now council retired Jenny Brekhus.

We will miss Brekhus who didn’t just rubber stamp whatever city staff recommended, but looked at proposals closely, and always thought of the big picture of what each item meant for the future of our community as a whole.

Other media and council members complained of back and forth discussions, but that’s the very nature of deliberation.

In that same vein, some in the community say Our Town Reno is too negative. To that, we say remember that just cheerleading every move or every business or every powerful person, as some media do and a majority of council members vote for, can lead to long term negative outcomes.

In this case, it could be one less public convenience, to the detriment of all of us, for the benefit of a few.

If we keep doing this, can you imagine a downtown with no public space?

We say let the developers and investors build an underground or internal garage, if they really want more parking, and leave our street public.