A “Vision” with NO Plan
3D Satellite Imagery of Jacobs Entertainment, Inc.’s land holdings West of Downtown Reno.
This article was written by Margo Piscevich with contributions and editing by Hunter Rand.
I attended the two-and-a-half hour virtual meeting that the City of Reno held on Monday, January 10th regarding Jacobs Entertainment, Inc.'s (JEI) Neon Line District development. Despite joining the meeting early on to speak and ask questions, and entering the queue to do so, with the City PROMISING that everyone would get a chance to participate if they wanted to, I still did not get a chance to participate with the moderator ending the meeting just after 8:00 p.m.. That being said, I was surprised by what I heard.
The first 30-minutes of the meeting consisted of representations of the project made by JEI's attorney, Garrett Gordon, speaking unnecessarily for most of that time followed up by ten minutes of JEI VP of Nevada Operations Jonathan Boulware proselytizing about how HE built relationships with motel residents and no one was simply given 30-days noticed and evicted before demolishing their residences - despite someone in the live chat proclaiming that it was exactly what happened.
Over 400 people joined the virtual meeting with others watching on Reno's YouTube Channel. Despite this, only a handful of handpicked pre-submitted questions were selected to be answered with only and handful of live questions being fielded. The few citizens that has the opportunity to speak had great questions and even great recommendations, but were only met with skepticism and vague non-answers by JEI and the City of Reno's associate planner. It was so bad that at one point JEI's attorney asked to move on and the moderator asked to stay on the point they were discussing.
The development plan for the Neon Line District, between JEI and the City of Reno was passed by the City of Reno on October 13th, 2021 with notice only being executed to the minimum standard required by the Nevada Revised Statutes; for a project that JEI proclaims will change the landscape of our city and become a nationally recognized entertainment destination, in our community of over 300,000 people, only approximately 1,000 were notified, one third of one percent. The public simply had no input.
No one from the City Council participated in the meeting outside of Councilmember Devon Reese dropping into the chat with his social media handles for his reelection campaign. The City Manager wasn't even present - in fact, the only two individuals participating that were city employees were an associate city planner and an IT guy who knew how to run the meeting but didn't seem to know how to turn off his own camera.
This so called, "development plan," has no specifics for the development of the JEI property. Generally a development plan discusses the scope, financial information, plans for use, time frames, property descriptions, water and sewage usage, traffic impacts, public safety, roads, walking areas, density, building plans, and conditional use permits. This, "development plan," is more of a, "lets wait and see what happens in 20-years."
At the end of it all, this project is a conceptual plan with omissions so great that you could drive a truck through them. Per JEI's attorney Garrett Gordon, it was always a "vision" and so far, there isn't a concrete plan. There is no agreed upon definition of affordable housing, and as said in the meeting, JEI is an entertainment developer, not a housing developer, so why is JEI promising affordable housing? Why is JEI promising 1,000 units for workforce housing, and what even is workforce housing? In fact, it was confirmed that JEI is hoping to bring in an outside housing developer to make it happen but once again, nothing is written in stone because so far its all just a "vision."
Click here to see the recorded Neon Line Community meeting on the City of Reno’s YouTube channel.
Correction 01/11/2022: Per an appellant, Naomi Duerr was watching the meeting and engaging in the live chat of the virtual meeting.