Photo of the proposed site for Riverwood.

The "Riverwood" shopping center has been an on-again-off-again project for years now. This is the shopping center that's going to be built in Douglas County at Topsy Lane, right across the highway from Best Buy and the Carson Valley Plaza. Originally it was going to be built by AIG Baker, the same developer who built the Carson Valley Plaza. But then they backed out of the deal. Later on it was picked up again by Riverwood Redevelopment LLC, which is owned by Jay Timon, who is a former employee of who? AIG Baker. So I guess he's pretty determined to get Riverwood off the ground, and now he's confident enough to start announcing a couple of the big anchor stores. And the biggest by far is Kohl's, the major department store that recently had been rumored to be moving in to the old Kmart building at the north end of town. I guess that deal fell through, or it really was a rumor, because they sound pretty sure of themselves that they'll break ground for Kohl's this fall, and be open by October 2008. This store is supposed to even be a smidge bigger than the one they opened a couple of years ago in south Reno, so I don't know how we rate.

The other retailer announced is Sportsman's Warehouse, which I'm not a sportsman so that doesn't really get my skin tingling. Kohl's doesn't get my skin tingling either, except to know that my wife will probably be making weekly pilgrimages to the place, so it's going to be a part of my life no matter what. And of course where you have major anchor stores, you also get a lot of other, smaller places clustering around, and a lot of the time those stores end up being more interesting than the anchors anyway. So things look like they're set to take off at Riverwood this year, so we'll have to keep an eye on it.

This is also right next door to the land where Jethro recently announced he wants to build his casino. And luckily the article was written by the Record Courier, not the Nevada Appeal, so there is none of the teeth-gnashing that inevitably gets inserted into their articles about how Douglas County is "stealing" these stores from Carson City. Instead we get teeth-gnashing about how the county is giving tax breaks to the developer to build the shopping center. So pick your controversy, I guess.