Tag: bodines

The site of Bodines Restaurant and the adjacent JD's Trailer Park, in South Carson, finally has been surrounded with chain link fence. This can only mean one thing: the scent of demolition is on the wind, and it's getting stronger.

The land here at the corner of Carson Street and Clear Creek Road is being cleared out to build a brand-new casino, taking the decades-old restaurant and trailer park with it. The trailer park is no loss; it may have been home to a few families, but it was an eyesore that had overstayed its welcome. The restaurant, on the other hand, was a favorite steakhouse to many residents, and will surely be missed.

I'll be following the demolition and construction here on this site, bringing you periodic updates on their progress. After all, Jethro's and the Ormsby House are both stalled projects; I need whatever excitement I can get. Hopefully this project has the momentum that the other two don't.

Workers have started dismantling Bodine's Restaurant at the south end of town this week. The building, along with the trailer park next door, is being removed so that work can begin on the new casino that's being built on the corner. That project is expected to get started this summer and be open sometime in 2007.

The new casino.

They're doing the demolition very gingerly at first, taking it apart almost one board at a time. It's like they want to keep everything in good condition so they can rebuild it somewhere else. I'm sure they're not planning on doing that, but there has to be some reason they're not just running in with the bulldozers.

One of the benefits of them tearing it down this way is that you get to peel back the layers of time. The first thing they removed was the entrance foyer and wood paneling from the front of the building, and in the process they've uncovered an old facade that had been buried beneath the planks. This white brick wall has been there in the darkness the whole time, along with the red gabeled roof that reads “Cocktails”.

It looks funny, like Bodine's just swallowed up an entire building whole. Like when you cut open a big fish and find a small fish inside. There must have been some expansion and renovation done in the past to turn the little red-and-white cocktails building into the big, wood-covered Bodine's. And now it's being taken apart in reverse, like watching a time-lapse movie backwards as the whole place gets “unbuilt”.

They're not going to tear down the whole place like this, are they?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about this as speculation, a deal that had been floated around but hadn’t been finalized yet. But now the deal is done, and it’s official: Bodine’s restaurant at the south end of Carson has been sold, and it will be demolished to make way for a new casino.

Bodine’s Restaurant will only be open for one more month.

Developer Kevin Coleman of SoCal’s K&S Properties had been in talks with Bodine’s for a while, since the land is in a good spot right along the highway, and Bodine’s holds one of the few unrestricted gambling licenses in Carson City. With this license, Coleman can build a casino without having to building a hotel to go along with it, a new requirement the city enacted a few years ago to cut down on the number of small casinos popping up all over the place. The story came out three weeks ago that a deal was in the works, but it wasn’t until now that they reached a firm agreement. The sale has finally gone through (for an undisclosed amount), and Bodine’s will close its doors for good on January 15th, ending more than 20 years of business on South Carson Street.

Both the restaurant and JD’s trailer park next door will be torn down, along with assorted other buildings like the now-vacant Floral Vineyard gift shop. The new casino will be built over the course of 2006. It will have a “Western” theme, and it will include an underground parking garage. Now, I’m not too sure that Carson City needs another casino. We’ve already got several big places like the Carson Nugget, Pinon Plaza, and the Casino Fandango. The Ormsby House should be opening some time this decade, and if Max Baer Jr ever gets off his butt and gets something done we’ll have a Beverly Hillbillies Casino too. If this new casino is meant to be for locals, what’s going to draw them away from the other places? And if it’s for tourists, why aren’t they building hotel rooms with it? Casinos might be good business, but does adding another one really help the community?

And if the casino itself isn’t controversial enough, even worse is the proposal that Kevin Coleman came up with to renovate the Carson City Fairgrounds, located right next door to Bodines. He wanted to sink a million dollars into rebuilding the arena and paving the parking lot, which the casino would then use as overflow parking. These changes didn’t sit well with the folks who use that fairgrounds, so that part of the plan has been withdrawn for now. Coleman’s going to rework his plans and maybe present something else later. But, for now, the Bodine’s deal is going ahead without the fairgrounds component.

The arena at the Carson City Fairgrounds.

JD’s Trailer Park is also going to be wiped out, but that’s no big loss. It’s nothing but an enormous eyesore on the highway, and it’s been deserted for months now, so it’s not like anyone is going to be driven out of their home because of this. The trailer park needs to go, so get rid of it. Here are a couple of shots for posterity, since you know as soon as it’s gone it will be forgotten forever.

JD’s Trailer Park, right next door to Bodine’s.

One of the trailers in the trailer park.

An abandoned car in the trailer park.

Here we go again. The little piece of land that sits at the corner of Hwy 395 and Clear Creek Road is making news again. A few years ago it got a lot of attention when a developer wanted to buy it, along with most of the Carson City Fairgrounds next door, to turn into a shopping center. That plan somehow got distorted so that everyone started believing that Fuji Park, next door to the fairgrounds, was going to be paved over as well, and that started a huge grassroots movement against the whole development. Raise your hands if you remember “Save Fuji Park”.

Bodines Restaurant and the trailer park next door. Both are facing demolition if this new plan goes through.

That plan was abandoned and the park was left alone. But now a new developer has come in, and wants to develop only the corner of the property, building a casino where Bodine’s Restaurant now stands and leaving the fairgrounds where it is. He does want to invest money into “improving” the fairgrounds, though, which would involve building a brand-new arena in a slightly different spot and paving the fairground’s parking lot. The parking lot, of course, could be used as an overflow lot when the casino’s lot is full.

The plans involve a casino on the corner, a moved arena, and a lot of paved parking.

That’s a little bit of a problem, though, since it seems the folks who use the fairgrounds now like it the way it is. According to this new plan, the grandstands at the relocated arena would be facing south, so spectators would have to sit facing directly into the wind and sun. Right now they’re a little bit sheltered by facing east. Plus there’s the fact that horses are able to walk a lot better on dirt than they are on pavement. But beyond the practical problems, there’s the whole issue of a California developer coming in and telling longtime residents what to do with their park. It looks like a situation where the developer is building a Western-themed casino, and loves having the added bonus of having a real-life rodeo arena next door. But the fairgrounds we have now is too dumpy for them, because they don’t really want it to be an authentic rodeo arena. They want to do the whole Las Vegas thing of creating a simulacrum of a rodeo arena, something that looks good for the tourists but doesn’t have all that vulgar dirt and horse crap. I mean, this will be right next door to their shiny new multi-million dollar casino. Can’t have the patrons getting dirty. The problem is, this is Carson City, not Las Vegas. We still have things here that are authentic. We still have people here who own and ride horses because they enjoy it, not because it’s a “Western theme” and the tourists want to see horses. And if being authentic means the parking lot has to be dirt, and the grandstands have to face away from the sun, then that’s the way it has to be.

And plus there’s the fact that I’ve still never been to eat at Bodine’s. They can’t tear it down until I’ve been there at least once. I mean, come on.