The abandonment of Stevenson Street, a street connector between 1st and 2nd Streets is still on the table and will be headed back to Reno City Council September 11 with a modified plan.
The Mod and Mod II sits to the east of the street, and a vacant lot that was formerly home to the Greyhound bus station sits to the west.
The abandonment was previously before the council in a different form. The first concept was to propose a green space park-like setting and remove the street completely, back in 2020, but the council at the time wasn't so keen on abandoning the street without a development agreement in place to guarantee that what was proposed would actually be built. There were references to the city's prior abandonment of a section of Mill Street south of the current Marriott Renaissance for a planned project that never came to fruition.
The previous proposal to abandon Stevenson Street was before Mod II was built, and the project then being proposed for the west side of Stevenson Street never came to fruition.
We haven't heard much about it until now, with a new plan headed to the Reno City Council again. Also you can find all of the newer attached dated 9/4/2024 here. Be sure to click the 'Record Info' drop-down and then click 'Attachments'. There are a lot of attachments but check out the ones dated from this month.
You can see an image of the updated plan, shown below.
The staff report summarizes:
If abandoned, the site will be redeveloped into a private parking area with one-way through access, providing sixty-eight (68) parking spaces for both public and private use (Exhibit C). Twenty-two (22) of the parking spaces will be paid public parking and the remaining spaces will be utilized for the adjacent developments. The applicant will fund all improvements to the street including signage, landscaping, islands, trees, and amenities. Abandonment of this block will increase the number of public parking spaces, improve the streetscape environment, and enhance safety and connectivity in the area near Wingfield Park. Staff analysis focused on traffic, access, and circulation; public parking; landscaping; public services; public benefit; utilities; and financial and legal implications.
It then goes on to state they recommend approval.
There are quite a few conditions attached to the approval. It seems like these conditions must be met before the abandonment is fully recorded. This includes a mandatory property owners association or similar entity shall own and be responsible for the maintenance of the property. Such documents shall be reviewed and approved by the City Attorney to ensure conformance to this and applicable City regulations. It also includes a condition that the proposed abandonment shall maintain through-vehicular access by creating a one-way twenty-six (26) foot vehicular access easement through the center of the property. An additional condition states that there will be pedestrian access on both sides of the street, and the existing five-foot landscaped parkway and five-foot wide sidewalk on the east side of the property will be maintained in perpetuity.
There are additional conditions for parking as well;
Sixty-eight (68) parking spaces shall be developed with a minimum of twenty-two parking spaces dedicated for public use (Condition No. 10/Exhibit E). The east side of the property shall be developed with eleven (11) paid public parking spaces and twenty-three (23) private parking spaces to be used by the residents of the adjacent apartment complex. The west side shall be developed with eleven (11) paid public parking spaces and twenty-three (23) public and private parking spaces. Included in the 68 parking spaces will be four (4) parking accessible parking spaces with two (2) on either side, and two (2) reserved for private parking and two (2) reserved for public parking. Twenty-two dedicated public parking spaces exceeds the existing number of paid public parking spaces by six (6). There is a condition that the paid public parking shall not exceed the City rate. There are also conditions for landscaping and public utilities as well.
Kromer, who owns most of the parcels on the west side, Kromer has spent $14,426,500 to acquire all but 1 property on the block. This equates to $137.50/SF.
I think my main issues here are:
- Once the abandonment is finalized after the conditions are met, and the developer aquires the land, what is legally stopping the developers from changing or altering these conditions? For example, the staff report states that "once a residential project is built on the west side, 23 public and private parking spaces will be reserved for those residents." I don't understand why the city has to give up a street in order for that FUTURE project to pencil out. So, what legally binds the developer to these conditions, without a development agreement in place? Is it the conditional permit itself? If the developer breaks those conditions, what happens to the street? Does it revert back to the city? I can't find any texts in the staff report that addresses that big 'IF'.
- This city has a poor record of abandonining streets and regretting it later. We can talk about the diagonal portion of 1st Street over by the ballpark, abandoned for a 40-story skyscraper project that never happened. We can talk about the abandonment in Powning that affected the Passage Reno apartments and gave up part of the city park, because of a previous project that fell through, the new owner of that property 'inherited' the abandonment and put a much larger project in. We can talk about the abandonment of Mill Street for the Siena, which ended up serving no real purpose.
- When you look at the photos below, the parking spaces at Mod II aren't even close to being full yet, so I don't understand why they would need more resident parking on the streets.
- The NAB was really concerned as well, about this proposal.
- Why can't the city just do this project themselves, and triple the amount of income from parking meters? There isn’t enough ROW to construct the current plan and include the required sidewalk and streetscape requirements. Reno could do a variation on the original diagonal parking scheme for pennies since street parking is not considered a “parking lot” and doesn’t trigger tree islands every 12 spaces.
And my final thought is, build the project to the west of Stevenson Street FIRST, then pursue this route. This is why this needs to be in a development agreement that INCLUDES whatever proposed resdiential project that is being planned on the west side of Stevenson Street. If the Greyhound Bus Station site isn't going to be developed in five years, well, then come back in five years with this ask.
Maybe I don't understand how this abandonment will work with conditions attached to it, because no previous abandonment had conditions, and if they did, they weren't binding. Think Ponte Vecchio/Passage Reno on Riverside Drive.