The Capital Projects Surcharge Advisory Committee received some grim news in their 7/30 meeting.
By 2028, if the fund isn’t supplemented with more income, there will be just $85,474 left in the coffer, and that’s only if all the proposed repairs and improvement projects to the National Bowling Stadium and Reno Events Center come in at their projected estimates without any cost overruns.
The Capital Projects Surcharge Fee was passed in the 2011 Nevada Legislature for downtown Reno hotels with non-restricted gaming licenses as a $2 room surcharge to pay for capital improvement projects for publicly owned buildings including the National Bowling Stadium and Reno Events Center, to help increase tourism. While those two buildings are usually prioritized because they require so much upkeep, the fee can pay for projects on other City-owned facilities, too, including the Downtown Reno Ballroom, the old Citi Center site (currently used by the Downtown Reno Partnership), and even the Reno Arch. Here’s the ordinance language:
The Bowling Stadium and Events Center are rapidly aging, however, and both require a series of expensive improvements, including a new roof for the Reno Events Center with a project estimate of $1,000,000, elevator maintenance, paint and more. In the next few years, these maintenance projects will eat up nearly all of the remaining fund balance.
The Row and J Resort are the only two hotel-casinos left downtown that have both hotel rooms AND a casino. Harrah’s closed during the pandemic in 2020 and didn’t re-open, dealing a blow to the fund, and Cal Neva sold their Nevadan hotel to Siegel Group in 2022. The Siena closed in 2010 and the building became the Marriott Renaissance.
Although representatives from Reno Tahoe (RSCVA) gave an impressive presentation on new bowling and non-bowling events being secured and planned at the National Bowling Stadium and Events Center, it doesn’t do much to increase that Capital Surcharge fund.
If the City wants to try to increase the amount of revenue in this fund, they have two options, and those options have to be decided on quickly before Bill Draft Requests are due: either propose increasing the room surcharge for J Resort and The Row to $4 per room (or higher), or expand the district that is subject to the fee and include four non-gaming hotels in the surcharge mix, which would be Renaissance Hotel, Whitney Peak, and I think Worldmark, and the Marriott across from Greater Nevada Field. Any changes to the Capital Surcharge whether expanding the district or increasing the fee, would have to go through the legislature.
It was mentioned in the meeting that initial discussions with the non-gaming hotels showed zero appetite to come on board, and representatives from The Row and J Resort mentioned they were worried how increasing the room surcharge on their own rooms only would affect their guests, and make their hotels less competitive with those outside the downtown district (ie. Peppermill, Atlantis, Nugget, etc., who don’t pay and wouldn’t have to pay this $2 or $4 room surcharge). Councilman Martinez noted that if there wasn’t much appetite locally to expand the district and include the four non-gaming hotels downtown, there probably wouldn’t be that appetite at the legislative level either. (And of course, those non-gaming hotels would have to agree to levy the fees on their guests, which seems unlikely.)
The idea was brought up to possibly defer the maintenance costs to future years, or maybe doing half of the roof or repair smaller pieces of the roof of the Reno Events Center (which makes no sense), but Councilman Devon Reese, who is a member of the Advisory Committee along with Councilman Miguel Martinez, Mayor Schieve (who wasn’t there), Bryan Carano from The ROW, and Jonathan Boulware from J Resort, wasn’t keen on that idea, mentioning that deferring maintenance costs could increase the costs of repair down the line.
Reese drew a hard line in the sand by stating he wasn’t hearing any solutions, only problems, and pushed the responsibility of trying to talk the non-gaming hotels into joining the surcharge club, onto the Row and J Resort.
Then discussion ensued on just how much, if it all, the non-gaming hotels benefit from getting room nights from visitors and participants using the Bowling Stadium and if that should be a discussion point for the Row and J Resort to have with non-gaming hotels. Representatives from the Row seemed frustrated that they and J Resort alone had to pay for these repairs if other non-gaming hotels downtown benefitted from events held at the Reno Events Center and the Bowling Stadium but didn’t have to levy that fee on their hotel guests.
Either way, it will be a tough sell, and it sounds like off-record discussions have already yielded some push-back from downtown’s non-gaming properties.
But, the bottom line is, if more revenue isn’t created for maintenance and repairs, and there are cost overruns, either the buildings will really start to deteriorate (think Community Assistance Center) and be even harder to attract events to, which could mean the potential loss of bowling championships held at the Bowling Stadium, or the repairs would have to come out of the City of Reno’s already-strapped general fund or the room tax fund.
The reason for that is the City of Reno actually owns both the Bowling Stadium (ownership was transferred to the City in 2002) and the Reno Events Center, along with the Downtown Reno Ballroom and the old Citi Center site.
The Bowling Stadium was constructed in 1995 at a cost of $47 million, funded by a room tax lobbied by the city of Reno to the Nevada Legislature based on commitments from the American Bowling Congress and the Women's International Bowling Congress,[1] which itself merged with the ABC to form the United States Bowling Congress (USBC) in 2005.
The Reno Events Center was constructed and opened in 2004/2005 at a cost of $28.5 million to $45 million, depending on the source you look at. It was funded with a complex private-public partnership bond with Newco (which was then the tri properties of Circus Circus, Eldorado and Silver Legacy and Harrah’s). The RSCVA (Reno-Tahoe) manages it.