Reno wants to be Silicon Valley’s back office
By James Nash, Bloomberg
Reno, Nevada, a town that built an economy on quickie divorces, is mapping out the second act of its American life.
Faded casinos are being reborn as condominium towers. Discarded cardboard and wood — even junked cars — are being fashioned into gigantic pieces of art for the annual Burning Man festival in the nearby desert. The mayor governs the city of 233,000 with the aid of a kidney donated by her sister.
Few cities needed a second chance as much as Reno. By January 2011 unemployment was 13.9 percent, and two-thirds of homes sold that year were short sales or foreclosures. The malaise contained the seeds of the rebirth: The newly unemployed snapped up dirt-cheap real estate, spawning an artist-entrepreneur economy.
“A lot of people like us lost their jobs and started asking, ‘Now what the hell am I going to do?,’” said Eric Raydon. His answer was to go into business with two brothers buying and rebuilding properties in a gentrifying area known as Midtown. “We saw opportunities here.”
As downtowns across the U.S. revive, Reno is among cities that have a tougher task to reinvent themselves. Detroit, the largest U.S. city to go bankrupt, is repopulating downtown towers with companies such as Quicken Loans Inc., which moved from the suburbs in 2010. Atlantic City, N.J., battered by Superstorm Sandy and the closure of several of its casinos, wants to diversify beyond gambling and rebrand itself as a university community.
Reno is rebounding. Unemployment dropped by 1.5 percentage points in February from a year earlier, to 7 percent, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Nationally, joblessness fell by 1.2 percentage points in the period, to 5.8 percent. City sales-tax receipts are projected to rise 7.9 percent in 2015 toward the 2008 peak.
An excellent article that contains the following noteworthy information which summarizes the importance of diversifying a local economy.
“Reno was Nevada’s largest city; Las Vegas didn’t catch up until the 1950s. Reno now ranks third behind Vegas and one of its suburbs, Henderson.”
“As Reno faded its leaders turned to bowling, balloon races and rodeos to revive its fortunes.”
“Reno’s casinos made less money in 2014 than they did in 1993, as the city fell to the 16th-largest U.S. gambling market by 2012 amid competition from Indian-owned casinos.”
“Reno, Nevada, a town that built an economy on quickie divorces, is mapping out the second act of its American life.”
“Reno has attracted Bay Area-based Apple Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. In addition to the brand-name companies Reno is incubating startups such as TrainerRoad and EasyKeeper and the city has designated a strip of downtown as “Startup Row,” with offices looking out to snow-covered mountains and the Truckee River.”
“Reno is rebounding. City sales-tax receipts are projected to rise 7.9 percent in 2015 toward the 2008 peak.”
“Near the techies and the hipsters are elements of Reno that have stubbornly refused to buy into the new vision. Downtown remains a hodgepodge of souvenir shops peddling $10 T-shirts, casinos advertising steak dinners for $9.99, pawnshops and payday lenders.”
“Chris Baum, President and Chief Executive of the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority said “The world changes and you have to change with it.”
So South Lake Tahoe, any of the “stubbornly refused to buy into the new vision” sounding familiar to you?
4-mer, you are absolutely right. This is totally applicable to the South Shore.
But the powerful people here would really prefer that all the working people just leave the basin. I truly believe that their vision for Tahoe is of a national park, with a few wealthy and powerful residents, and the rest of the masses would only be permitted to visit and/or work here, while living in the valleys below.
It’s the only explanation for the convoluted system that has developed here.
Good comment 4rmer-
Lets take one more trip into the Reno area and look at where the water for all this development comes from….
You got it, California. Once again, a desert city is converting itself to huge growth on the backs of resources it is taking from others.
The Truckee River, which begins in Tahoe City, provides the bulk of water for the Reno area through a series of storage lakes on the Eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
The river,running through a series of water diversion projects upstream and downstream in the Truckee River Canyon is divided among various consumers, ultimately ending in Pyramid Lake, a Desert lake East of Reno with no outlet….a sink. The Federal Govt has enacted laws guaranteeing minimum flows into Pyramid to maintain a fishery there and to protect some endangered species.
This situation of low water availability on the East Slope in Nevada is a replicate in many ways of the Sierra Nevada’s west slope. The West slope, as we know, has historic water allocation agreements falling apart every day due to lack of planned water flows from the non-existent 2013-2014 snowpack.
Deeded water rights have been rising in prices and several large companies have been quietly collecting them (Bentley Corporation in the Carson Valley for one).
Hang on Reno water users, it may be a rough, expensive ride.
Well, that’s the direction the water flows naturally. Are you suggesting diverting it all uphill over the Sierra and toward the west? Really?