Nevada Discovery Museum / Virginia Street Bridge Projects

3/6/09 - VARIOUS TIDBITS
- I heard a rumor (via Daryll, a commercial real estate broker in town, who stood up in the meeting and announced it) at the last Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board meeting that CVS Pharmacy has elected not to occupy the downtown building on 2nd and Sierra, and to call Sage Commercial if anyone knows of a prospective tenant to sublease. However, Jessica Jones, Redevelopment staff, quickly shot this rumor down, mentioning she is still in talks with CVS, and that CVS has not told her they plan to back out of the deal or the building. Hmmm. Either way, some wires are obviously crossed here. We'll see what happens!
- In the upcoming city council meeting agenda for March 11, there is an agenda item for $71,475 to go toward a web-based Watershed Map Tool. UPDATE: This project is being paid through a grant from the Truckee River Fund, so I take back my complaining about about it :) I don't have an issue with the project itself, I just didn't want the money to come from the city's general fund.
- In the upcoming Redevelopment Meeting this Wednesday, the board is going to discuss changes to the Payment Terms for SK Baseball, and Nevada Land LLC. Basically (and don't kill me if I get this wrong, Mr. Lewis) In the existing agreement, they get up to $2 million a year in sales tax revenue of their own stadium for the first 5 years. The have asked to raise that ceiling from 2 million to 2.5 million per year. The reason the developers want to to this is to keep his contractor and crew onsite once the stadium is complete, and start right into the second phase, which would be the elevated plaza shown below and 3 nightclubs and 3 restaurants. That way his work crew will stay continually employed form one project to the next. In exchange for this extra money, the developers will agree to not relocate the Reno Aces, even if it's because of economic hardship, for 15 years, instead of the original 10 years. The staff reports for the city come out today, so I'll definitely expand on this 'tidbit' once the full details of the deal are made public.
- The Nevada Discovery Museum has sprinted past the $10,000,000 mark in fundraising for its children museum downtown. It would sure be nice if the mainstream media would give a little love to this sleepy project, which hopes to start construction this spring/summer on the main phase of the project. Are you reading this...RGJ, News 2, News 4 and News 8?
- The Virginia Street Bridge Replacement Project has seemed to split off from the TRAction Visioning Project of all the bridges together, and there is a meeting March 24, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the McKinley Arts and Culture Center at 925 Riverside Drive. A brief presentation about the project and discussion is scheduled for the meeting. The Virginia Street Bridge is the first on a list of 6 to be replaced for better flood control.