Reno for Reno

Every time a national comedian like David Sedaris visits Reno and then takes a dump on us in the national media, there are two reactions from Reno residents. The first is one of horror: “Oh, my goodness, our tourism industry is on the ropes, how can we take another suckerpunch?” Then there’s the other group, let’s call them “Reno loyalists,” those of us who live here because we love it, and who have the confidence in our choices not to care what some New York pseudo-sophisticate has to say.

(And by the way, has anyone identified that elderly, Count Chocula-T-shirt-with-sweat-pants-wearing-fan Sedaris claimed on the Daily Show to have met? We’d like to interview her. Still, the possibility that his fans wear Count Chocula T-shirts to his shows says more about him than it does Reno.)

To put it in economic terms, that national punchline Reno has become is known as “the market.” It’s the sum total of 80 years of public relations efforts by private interests and a failed public agency, the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, which spends around $33 million in taxpayer money a year to promote tourism in Washoe County.

We don’t want to take a major tangent here, but the RSCVA should be dismantled and rebuilt. Keep the parts that work—management of the bowling stadium, for example—and return the room taxes to the businesses that generate them. Retire the debt, sell off the other facilities. Radical? Not from any business perspective.

Now, here’s why some Reno loyalists love “the market”: The market forces the major industry to recognize who its primary market is going to be in the future: us. We’re not saying anything casino managers don’t already know. The market will decide which of those towers survive as hotels and which become something else. This newspaper has long said we need a 20-30-something population living downtown in order for this city not to rot from the inside out. We’re not the first to recognize that at the same moment as some of those casino properties are figuring out what they will be, the University of Nevada, Reno wants to expand, and that’s going to mean students are going to need more living space. Think we’re the first to notice the handy and abundant parking and number of empty rooms in that Circus-Circus complex?

With our Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada popularity contest coming up, we’re going to talk a lot about innovative people and companies this summer. Look around Reno at the many things that make this a great place to live—and getting better all the time. Those are the innovators who have refocused this community’s from external to internal. Look at Midtown. Look at East Fourth Street. Look at Dickerson Road. Look at the Holland Project. Look at the Pier Group. Look at the Reno Bike Project. Look at all the collaborative projects run by the creative class that are what we Reno loyalists have been talking about for 20 years.

Every living, vibrant thing in this world has a life cycle. Midtown had to get pretty ugly before it was affordable enough for the innovators to move in. Those with eyes to see can drive down Virginia Street and envision a Reno for Reno future.