Changes

A Reno landmark (of sorts) came down for good today. The hideously ugly four-story sign for the old Riverboat Casino no longer disfigures Sierra Street. I meant to get a picture at lunch of the sign coming down but I was a little late. Here's all I could get:

The Riverboat opened in 1988 but only made it about 10 years. Like a lot of enterprises that open their doors in downtown Reno, the Riverboat felt the need to announce it's presence in the most obscenely gaudy way possible--hence the four-story sign shaped like a steamboat paddle-wheel. Then, when things don't work out the business closes down but the bigger-than-life eyesore remains. The hotel portion of the old casino is still in business today but like the majority of downtown Reno hotels it has effectively become low-income housing. Today, almost eight years after the casino shut it's doors, the sign came down to make way for a planned Long's Drug, which will serve the population that is expected to move into downtown's numerous condo projects in the coming years.

Speaking of those projects, people are at last starting to trickle in to Riverwalk Tower, AKA the old Comstock. We may be six months past the originally scheduled opening date, but better late than never I suppose. Interestingly, the RGJ article linked above describes the satisfaction of residents moving in to the old Comstock, but in practically the same breath it notes that the same problems we've seen with developers backing out of condo projects in Vegas now appear to be popping up here in Reno. The Developer who had plans to convert the Cal-Neva Casino's Nevada Tower into condos has backed out of the project, and the Chambolle project which was to go in just across the river from the Palladio now appears to be in doubt because of extremely high construction costs.

I don't expect these to be the last downtown condo projects that fall through, nor do I necessarily think this is a bad thing (except perhaps for the Cal-Neva, which will continue to hold the title of Reno's scuzziest major casino). All of the talk about converting every single square inch of downtown into condos was starting to seem a little ridiculous. Perhaps a few of the more fanciful speculators will now start to be weeded out and those projects that are truly in-demand can proceed.

And since we're talking about development, one bit of news makes me very happy: Gar Woods, the locally-beloved Tahoe Restaurant, says it will be opening a downtown location about two blocks from the Fortress of Solitude.

UPDATE: Kudos to Scott Schrantz of AroundCarson.com for sending me this link to a picture of what the Riverboat's sign used to look like. I agree with Scott; it won't be missed.