7/5/2008 - CITIZEN REPORT - CAC MEETING UPDATE -
1. Pioneer Site - A project management committee has been created with 4 City staff members and four County employees. Lewis again mentioned he wanted to minimize the parking aspect of the project, mentioning that this property wasn't the right site for a parking garage. Lewis is pretty stoked about this project. When pinned down for some kind of timeframe, Lewis relented and said MAYBE an RFP will go out in six months after agreements are finalized. Dick Scott complimented Lewis on forging such a close working relationship with the County. Dan Gustin who sat in at the meeting, said 'the project is absolutely tremendous' and applauds county commissioners for coming forward for the help of RDA, and to RDA for pouncing on the opportunity. Gustin went on to say in the four years he has been on the council, this was the most impressive collaboration of government he had seen, or something to that affect.
2. STAR BONDS - This was the more interesting topic of the meeting. STAR Bonds fascinate me, mainly because they sound so exotic. All kidding aside, the omni-present RDA staff member Jessica Jones reported that five STAR Bond 'requests' are in the pipeline. I say 'requests' because they aren't really requests for the Bonds themselves, it's a request for the City to put in serious amounts of staff hours (usually months worth of work) to determine the feasibility of issuing a STAR bond. Remember, there have only been two issued in this state, one for Cabella's and one for Scheel's, so in one way, they ARE pretty exotic. Anyway, the STAR bond requests are as follows: (1) Northern Nevada Urban Development, for their mega-block of land in Northeast downtown, (2) L3 Development (which would include/explore retail portion of montage and rebranding/renovation of the Fitz and possibly Phase 2 of the retrac cover), (3 and 4) Nevada Lands (the Baseball Folks as Lewis calls them) and (5) The Fitzgerald Group, for property North of McCarren and East of Virginia St. It will be interesting to see which contenders make it through the qualification process, since I can't really see the City issuing all five. All politics aside, it should be the project(s) that will actually return the highest retail tax yield to repay the Bond. In understandable terms, a Six Flags theme park would yield a higher sales tax return and be less of a risk than a Museum of Bloggers downtown, honoring Reno's best bloggers with alters. If you were a visitor which would you go to and spend money at? That's the key question to ask in issuing a STAR Bond. Another question would be do the developers have their act together? What feasibility studies have they done on their own projects? etc etc. So on a final note, the CAC and very astute citizens attending the meeting noticed only four businesses were mentioned for five STAR Bonds, so why two for the Baseball Folks? Well, Lewis stated that the Baseball Folks are in negotiation to acquire/buy GSR. Whoah! After the ooh's and aah's settled in the room, he went on to mention the Baseball Folks have a vision of a higher intensity of usage of the GSR property, or envision making it denser, I can't recall exactly how he phrased it, but this is definitely big news. Maybe he meant they are buying part of the gigantic GSR lot..or maybe they are buying the whole thing. He didn't elaborate. Either way it's big. The two STAR Bond feasibility requests for the Baseball folks 'I think' go to Council on the 16th of July, but don't quote me on that I could be wrong. Lewis mentioned he would like to keep all these feasibility requests on the same track, for optimum usage of his staff. STAR Bonds are cumbersome, and take at least 6 to 9 months to process.
3. Triple AAA Ballpark - An army of dirt-related construction rigs are starting to dig the hole the field will go in. The Baseball Folks are beginning to focus more attention on the retail aspects of the project (which should please the Council) and should go before them on the 16th to separate out the retail portions of the project from the baseball part, which includes separating out the parcels. Planning includes a large office building where fire station used to be, plus the commercial pieces on other side of Evans. No major hiccups with the project thus far. Lewis mentioned they are selling ticket reservations 'like crazy'.
4. 10 North Virginia Street - Lewis mentioned Mr. Papas' new designs are really interesting architecturally, calling them 'Dog-gone interesting'. They are in the process of setting up meeting with 10 North Virginia Canopy Design Subcommittee, which I believe is headed up by Sharon Zadra, to evaluate the designs.
5. ReTRAC Cover - Moving along slower than RDA would like, but nonetheless moving along. Lewis mentioned the railroad is a bit of a pest sometimes…The project is delayed a bit because they had to assign flagman to the project to manage/run/direct the trains etc. As soon as the flag man gets here from wherever he is coming from, they can start to lay foundations for cover. This has held up the project by a couple of weeks, however it should still be completed by the end of December. RDA is gearing up for proposals in Phase 2.
6. Beautification - July9th is a meeting with businesses on Virginia Street to discuss extending the special lighting on the Mt. Rose-to-Pueblo block all the way up to Liberty Street. The facade improvement program is moving forward, should be back to council shortly.
7. Post Office - Lots of good news here. RDA has a tentative agreement with property owner of replacement site, after much negotiation over price. They are also restructuring the post office agreement to be in conformance of HUD which is source of funding, the deal should be council agenda in August. At the same time in August the post office plaza and whitewater park will also be on the agenda to get funding. Hoping plaza will start construction next year, and whitewater park after that. There is a 2 year time span between title acquisition and the time the new postal facility is done and the post office can relocate delivery operations..plenty of time for public process and input.