Scott Schrantz's Blog

The old Valley Bar, on Hwy 88 in the Carson Valley, has burned down. According to the article, a fire started about 5am yesterday morning, and by the time firefighters arrived it was too late to save it. The roof collapsed soon after they got there, and although some of the walls are still standing, the building is pretty much a complete loss. The owners, who bought the place less than a year ago, are unsure yet if they’re going to rebuild.

Image from www.valleybar.com/wst_page6.html

The Valley Bar, at the corner of Hwy 88 and Centerville Road, was one of the last remnants of the town of Centerville, a little oasis of trees in the middle of the valley. Once an independent town along the road to California, Centerville declined when the advent of cars and paved roads made it only a ten-minute drive in to Gardnerville. All that’s left now are about a dozen houses, a few leaning barns and, until yesterday, the Valley Bar. It sounds like there has always been a bar at that particular corner, and the current building was brought down from Virginia City in the 1930s.

The bar was a familiar landmark along Hwy 88. It looked pretty rundown from the outside, with peeling paint and rusting equipment laying around, and at times the dozen or so motorcycles parked out front would be enough to keep a square like me away. But you could say that all that was part of its charm, and it was supposedly one of the friendliest places in the valley. Of all the times I drove by it, it was never empty. Even in a heavy snowstorm there would be one car that had plowed through the drifts, or a set of footprints leading up to the front door. Now that it’s gone it’s a big loss to the character of the valley, and even if they rebuild it it won’t be the same place.

I’m going to try to get down there myself to take some pictures of the aftermath. But if we have any Carson Valley readers with a camera, scoot down there and upload a few shots to the site! I’m always looking for contributions from others, and you’ll be doing your part as citizen journalists.

Update: I have pictures.

There are a couple of local musical productions having their opening nights in Carson City tonight. First we have Seussical, put on by the Carson High Performing Arts, and there is also Forever Plaid being presented by the Western Nevada Musical Theater Company.

Suessical will be at the Carson City Community Center with six performances; this weekend it plays tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 and Sunday at 2pm, then next weekend on Saturday at 2:00 and 7:30, and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $10 for adults, $9 for students and $8 for kids. Call (775)887-0438 for information and reservations.

Forever Plaid is being staged at the WNCC campus over the next three weekends. Showtimes are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30, and Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm. The final performance will be April 9th. Tickets are $18/$16/$14, and the phone number for reservations is (775)445-4249.

Also opening this weekend, on the drama side, is A Couple of Blaguards by Frank McCourt at the Brewery Arts Center. There are four performances: Tonight, tomorrow, and next Friday and Saturday, all at 7:30. Tickets for that are $22 and can be reserved by calling (775)883-1976.

So if you’ll be in town any of those weekends, go out and catch some theater.

New Then And Now:
#13 - Nevada State Children's Home

Now that the first phase of the Carson City freeway is all done, it’s time to start working on the second phase. Some work is already going on on the south side of Hwy 50 and into the Lompa ranch, but I expect that this summer will see a lot more activity.

Unlike the first phase, which is elevated for its entire run, the second phase is going to be down in a depression, with cross streets passing over it on bridges. And instead of being built and opened all at once, they’re splitting it into two sub phases. First they’ll build and open it between Hwy 50 and Fairview Drive, and then they’ll finish it out to the Hwy 50/395 interchange at the south end of town.

3300 S. Edmonds

Most of the right-of-way where the freeway will be built is empty, but not all of it. Along Edmonds Drive, at the southeast edge of town, there is a strip of land that has been earmarked for freeway development for a long time now. But, since the freeway was still decades away, it remained private property and houses were built on it. Now those houses, the ones in the freeway’s path, are doomed and counting down their last days before the heavy equipment moves in.

3040 S. Edmonds

There are actually only three of these holdouts left. The rest of the houses along this strech of road were removed years ago, leaving behind a dozen phantom driveways along Edmonds. But these three are sticking it out until the end, refusing to give up. Soon they’ll be gone, along with any kind of peace along Edmonds Drive, but for now they’re still here.

2800 S. Edmonds

There are also a couple of houses on Fairview Drive that will have to be knocked down soon so they can build the freeway interchange. This one here, at 1799 Fairview, is already boarded up.

1799 Fairview Drive

I wonder what it’s like to live in a doomed house. To look around at the walls, the floor, the front yard, and to know that it’s all going to be gone soon.

One of our own Northern Nevada Bloggers, Diane Cohn of the Reno Realty Blog, got a full feature article about her in the Reno Gazette Journal last week. And the article isn’t even about her blog, but about her real estate podcast. Which I knew she was doing, but haven’t listened to yet.

The article goes into a little more detail about why she’s so gung ho about blogging and podcasting: she used to work for Apple. So she’s not just another Realtor who’s try to learn about this web stuff; she was a web geek first, before she got into real estate. Which explains why she has a really good blog and an in-depth website as her online presence, and other Realtors have sites like WeLoveCarsonValley.com.

One of the most interesting concepts she’s introduced me to is shared vacation ownership, where you go in with three or four other people to buy equal shares in a vacation home at Lake Tahoe, and then work out a schedule to share it throughout the year. It’s something I’ll definitely keep in mind after we move to Seattle and want to come back to visit the Tahoe area.

And hopefully Diane keeps up her blogging and her podcasting for a good long while, and the article enourages other people to start doing their own. There’s always more room in my Northern Nevada Bloggers list!

A hit tip to Yukon Sully (who tips his hat to Myrna the Minx) for pointing out this article about the latest incarnation of the ever-changing plans for the Reno Hilton. A development company is working on buying the place and converting it into condos, just like so, so, so many other hotels in Reno. But this new property, to be christened the “Grand Sierra Resort”, will be so much more than just condos. Restaurants, shopping, outdoor entertainment, water parks, fountains, and a pile of other yet-to-be-announced ideas (the designer prides himself on changing his mind often) will be part of the final package, when and if it ever gets built. The sale hasn’t even gone through yet, but they’re already taking $10,000 deposits from interested buyers, so at least the place will be partly occupied.

The Reno Hilton opened in 1978 as the MGM Grand, at the time the largest hotel/casino in the world. It went through a short stint under the Bally’s name in the late 1980s before becoming the Reno Hilton. It’s already a pretty impressive place, with a huge casino floor, several restaurants, a large showroom, gigantic conference center, a wedding chapel, video game arcade, shopping mall, bowling alley, and movie theater, all under one roof. I’m guessing most of that will be kept, or enhanced, as a way to bring in visitors. If any of this gets built at all. The designer, Dodd Mitchell, comes across in the article as one of those flaky artists who will get bored with the whole thing before it’s done. He’ll move on to something else, and sales will be below projections, and they’ll be lucky if they finish converting the tower that’s there now, much less building anything new.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I shouldn’t be pessimistic until it actually fails.

This is one of those weeks that I’m glad I don’t live in Virginia City. It seems that the whole town is without water right now - well, they have a small amount stored in tanks, but their supply has been cut off. Because Virginia City is high up in the mountains in the middle of the desert, they don’t have any wells or lakes or any other source of fresh water. The only way they get water into the town is through a pipeline that runs from a small lake above Tahoe, down the hill into Carson City, and then back up to VC. This pipeline is over 130 years old (even though parts of it were replaced just fifty years ago!), and they rely on it for all their fresh water. Well, yesterday they discovered there was a break in the pipe. And the break isn’t just anywhere, it’s located right underneath Hwy 395, at the top of Lakeview Hill. So they can’t just do a quick dig and fix the pipe, they have the close down one or more lanes of the highway, tear up the asphalt (which they just laid as part of the freeway project) and find exactly where the break is. Then they can fix it, rebury it, and repave the road. It could be done by tonight, if the break is near the shoulder, or it could take a few days if it’s right in the middle of the highway.

So Virginia City is under a strict water conservation lockdown right now. If their supply tanks get low enough, they might have to bring water in in trucks. And they’re going to have a lot of trouble up there if there’s a fire. Just another reason to be happy I live in the valley.

NDOT is going to be hosting a public meeting in Minden on March 29, about their idea to put a roundabout at County Road and Hwy 88. The state seems to be on this big roundabout kick the last couple of years. There is the one they installed on Fifth Street in Carson City, and the Arrowhead Drive exits on the new freeway are roundabouts. And now they’re trying to push Minden to have one, even though they’re meeting with resistance on every level. So they’re having this public forum, where they’ll try to convince Minden residents that they really do want a roundabout, and that once they have one they’ll come to love it. Residents, on the other hand, want a traffic signal at the corner.

I think that NDOT’s big issue is that they have a problem with traffic lights. They fought the idea of putting a stoplight at the intersection of Mottsville Lane and Hwy 88 in the Carson Valley for years, thinking that larger stop signs and flashing lights would reduce the number of accidents at the corner. They didn’t, and the State finally caved and put in a light. This is the route everyone takes to get to and from Lake Tahoe, even though NDOT would rather have you drive up Muller Lane to Foothill and then along there. Nobody does, unless they’re in the mood for a scenic drive.

Then NDOT fought hard against putting a stoplight at Stephanie Way and Hwy 395. There was even a death at the intersection, a death that would have been prevented by a light, and still they resisted. It wasn’t until the public outcry grew too big and attracted too much media attention that they relented, and now there’s a stoplight planned for sometime in the unknown future.

Now it’s County Road. This intersection, right by the Carson Valley Swim Center, in my mind is right on the border of needing some kind of control. Unless you’re there at just the wrong time of day, there are usually huge gaps in the Hwy 88 traffic that make turning easy. But with the population of the valley growing all the time, and County Road being the only side street to avoid Hwy 395 traffic, I can see where the intersection might be reaching the danger level.

So maybe that’s why NDOT wants to put a roundabout there, because there isn’t enough traffic on County Road to justify a signal, but we need something. But the agency has said they’ll respect the wishes of the community, whatever they may be, so you can expect this meeting next week to be mainly focused on convincing residents that they really do want a roundabout, they just don’t know it yet.

The meeting is Wednesday, March 29th at 7:00pm. at the C.V.I.C. Hall in downtown Minden. If you live in the Carson Valley, and you’ve got an opinion on the issue, on way or the other, you should show up.

I guess the city must have concluded the best time to do road work is during rush hour. That’s the only way to explain why Carson Street was down to one lane at 9:00 this morning as they did some work on the signal heads at Fairview.

This wasn’t just a fast in-n-out job, either. They had cones set up, they had signs all the way back at the ormsby House warning you that the lane was closed, and they had law enforcement out to direct traffic. This was a major effort, planned in advance. I guess they don’t like paying overtime, and that’s why they’re not working at night. which is when sane companies do road work.

This story’s pretty funny. It’s okay for it to be funny, because nobody got hurt (except for a broken arm, which could be argued that he deserved).

A Jeep gets extracted from the mine shaft it was driven into.

And it just reminds everybody to be extra careful in Nevada and Eastern California. You never know where these old mine shafts are going to pop up. They can even open up right underneath you. I remember a few years ago when a forgotten mine shaft in Virginia City caved in right next door to the high school, and swallowed the principal’s car! There’s been enough mining in the area to make the entire landscape of the Great Basin just one big piece of swiss cheese. There used to be a public awareness campaign on TV about it; it featured an open mine shaft with a creepy skeleton standing inside motioning for you to come in. Maybe mine shafts really are doorways to the Land of the Dead. Or maybe they just wanted to creep the hell out of kids and get them to stay away from open shafts.

On the other hand, you have to admire the skill of that driver. That’s a tiny little opening he drove into; if he hit it even a little bit sideways the car just would have lodged in it diagonally. He really had to drive into it square on to get the Jeep to go straight in like that. I’m impressed!