Tag: carsoncity

Whenever the blog seems to be slowing down, I know I can just drive by the Casino Fandango and take some pictures for a quick story.

The framing on the hotel is all finished, so now they've put up scaffolding and are moving onto things like installing windows and layering stucco on the exterior. The roof shingles are being put up as well. Winter is going to be here in just a couple of months, and I'm sure they'd love to have all the exterior work on this future Marriott done by then.

The casino expansion at the southwest corner of the building is going up very fast, faster even than the hotel. Up until now all the casino expansions they've done have just been expanding into existing space in the old Supply One building. The Fandango started out as a small casino space in the very front of an empty warehouse, and over the course of a few years they slowly filled up the whole building. Now they're expanding outside with this new addition.

This new expansion will also house the escalators and elevators that will take pedestrians up and over Curry Street to get them to the new Galaxy movie theater in safety. That's what this huge vertical part of the new building is for. They're making short work here of getting the wallboard put up and stuccoed.

The new bridge is also shrouded in scaffolding right now, with just one small tunnel allowed for traffic in each direction. All those barricades are temporary, though. As soon as exterior work on the bridge is done, the scaffolding will come down and Curry Street will be completely open underneath.

Notice that the construction company at work here is Metcalf Builders, the same crew that ostensibly is supposed to be working on the Ormsby House. It must be a relief to them to have a project they can actually work at full speed on for a change.

More good stuff from No Safe Place, this time a compendium of aerial views of downtown Carson City.

More details have been revealed about the fate of the Lucky Spur building, which until recently housed Stew's Sportatorium at the corner of Carson and Proctor. The building has been bought by the owner of the Carson Nugget, Alan Adams, and will reopen next week as Doppelgangers Bar and Grill. It doesn't sound like the new place will be substantially different than Stew's was; it will still have a brew pub, pool tables, and video poker machines in the front, and a restaurant in the back. But there is all-new ownership and management in place, and sometimes that's all it takes to make the difference between a flop and a hit.

And here's hoping that they finish removing the turquoise on the facade as part of the grand reopening. That would be a nice early Christmas present to downtown Carson City.

Apparently the sign in the windows of the Kitzmeyer Furniture building (former home of Java Joe's) advertising a Canadian sports bar is just a practical joke. The problem is that nobody, not even the owner of the building, knows how the sign got up there.

The real new tenant of the space, which was home to Joe Mango's Cafe for about a month, is Kim Lee's Sushi & Teri, which is currently located in the old Greyhound bus depot one block away at the corner of Telegraph and Plaza. This is a good move, I think, because it will bring more visibility to what I consider to be the best sushi place in the area. Not that I've had sushi for years and years; it's hard to sidle up to a sushi bar when you've got a wild three-year-old running in circles around the restaurant. But I'm sure we'll make it back one day, and when we do, it will undoubtedly be to Kim Lee's in the Kitzmeyer Building.

And what about Joe Mango's? Why did it close so fast? Apparently, the owner was never interested in running a restaurant. He always intended on reselling the lease, but he had to open and operate his own place for a little while before he could. Hence, Joe Mango's.

This also means we'll never get to find out exactly what a Canadian Sports Bar is. I envision 24-hour hockey and all the Tim Horton's donuts you can eat.

Beyond the movie theater, beyond the hotel and the skybridge, the Casino Fandango has also been doing construction inside, working to open a new Italian restaurant in the northeast corner of the building. Well, the construction work has spilled over to the outside of the building as they're not only putting up new signs, they're also painting the outside walls.

The "Ti Amo Italian Grille" is being advertised not only with a plump oversized tomato, but also with a Tuscan-style paint job over this part of the building.

The paint looks nice, but it hardly fits in with the blue and white neon motif they've got going on for the rest of the Fandango.

So especially if they're planning on keeping the rest of the exterior looking like this, the newly-painted part is really going to stand out. But maybe that's what they want, to get people looking and to get folks driving by to do a double-take and notice the changes. Then they'll see the signs for the restaurant, and decide to try it out.

Also in the Nevada Appeal, is the new Galaxy Theater at the Fandango too popular for its own good? Seems there's a lot of traffic in the area now, and even though the article tries to place the blame on crowds rushing to the theater, even NDOT admits that there's just more people in town now, so traffic is going to be getting constantly worse until the freeway is finished. Plus, Curry Street just reopened in its fully-paved glory a couple of months ago. So of course it's going to have more traffic; it was closed for a year. And before that it was little more than a dirt trail following the contours of the hills. Now that it's wide and smooth and flat it's a really attractive bypass to get around rush hour congestion on Carson Street, so a lot more people are going to be driving on it. Result? Traffic. One of the crappy side effects of growth.

I want to point to this post by No Safe Place, and this photo, taken from "C" Hill before there was a "C" - sometime in the 1870s.

Carson City looked so tiny back then, and there were so few trees that the big buildings had no problem sticking out. From the left, you can easily see the US Mint, the Central School, the First Methodist Church, and the Capitol Building. The rest of the valley is just kind of a sagebrush wasteland fading off into the hazy mountains.

If you want to see what the view looks like today, you've got to click on the link.

So the remodeling/renovation of Stew's Sportatorium (formerly the Lucky Spur) continues. This is kind of a puzzling remodel job, because the whole place was just gutted and rebuilt a couple of years ago, after sitting empty for more than two decades. So why remodel it again?

The Lucky Spur in 2003, before the first renovation.

There's a lot of confusing stuff happening over at Stew's lately. The sports bar has been having some financial difficulty lately. They've been fined for not paying unemployment insurance premiums, been put on the delinquent tax list for not paying property taxes, and had a manager embezzling money from them. The latest is that they're now being sued by a food supplier for not paying their bills. The building and business was put up for sale in April, and although the Nugget was interested and a sign appeared on the marquee saying "under new ownership," the company denies that they're going to sell, saying instead that they're working with a new partner. So it's hard to pin down exactly what's happening when even the newspaper is having trouble getting the full story.

There is one thing I can say for certain is happening, though: the renovation is going forward. I saw people going in and out of the building just this morning, and there are signs that they'll be changing the outside appearance at least a little bit. One of the most unfortunate things about the renovation they did a couple of years ago was the color scheme. Somehow they thought that the natural brick facing on the building would go well with a splash of turquoise. They were, of course, dead wrong, but that didn't stop them from painting the signs turquoise and putting up some turquoise stucco around their side door. It was hideous. Just look.

The turquoise marquee on Stew's.

But, as you can see from the following picture, the stucco around the doorway has been painted a more somber and sane brown. One can only hope the rest of the signage is soon to follow. Maybe not quite that shade of brown, but something a little more welcoming.

The sign is still turquoise, but the stucco has been painted brown.

And another interesting note about that sign, the one above the side entrance, is that it used to be the main sign out on Carson Street for the casino. It was later moved around to the side where it is now. Take a look at this postcard from the late 50s, and see the same sign advertising the Silver Spur.

Can you say, "A little late?" Freeway work resumes next month.

The 18-month gap from the opening of Phase One to the start of Phase Two is...just par for the course, I guess.

There's another article in the Nevada Appeal today about the narrowing of Carson Street that the city is planning on doing after the freeway is built. The plan is to narrow Carson Street to two lanes from Fifth to William Streets, which would be the whole downtown core by the Nugget and the Capitol. The idea then would be to widen the sidewalks and make the area more friendly to pedestrians. Because right now walking along Carson Street is not a fun experience. You're wedged in between the imposing storefronts and a heavy iron fence, walking inches from the passing cars, with an occasional semi truck threatening to sweep you from your feet. So widening the sidewalk would give you more room to move around, and maybe even give restaurants like B'Sghetti's room for a couple of outside tables.

Of course there are objections to the plan, most of them saying that there will still be tons of traffic going through downtown after the freeway is built, so Carson Street will be a horrible mess. But the article points out the one thing that I didn't consider, but should have. If Carson Street through downtown is a horrible mess, everybody's going to stay away from it. People who really have somewhere to go will know not to use Carson Street, they'll find a way to get around it. So cutting those cars out will reduce the amount of traffic downtown to a manageable level, because the only cars driving through downtown will be the ones that actually want to be there. The article calls this making Carson Street "less attractive" to cars, which in turn will make it more attractive to pedestrians.

Of course another piece that needs to fall into place is for attractive businesses to move to downtown, that make people want to go there in the first place. Right now there's not much to draw you in: there are a few restaurants and a couple of charming gift shops, but much of downtown is pawn shops and casinos, and that's not going to make tourists want to flock to downtown. There need to be the kind of businesses downtown that make you want to stroll from one shop to the next, and that's something the government can't just magically make appear. We're all going to have to work together to make it happen if we want a nice downtown.

Plus, if you look at the article (or have a copy of today's newspaper), look at the photo they used to demonstrate the way Carson Street used to be, with two lanes. Look familiar?

After grabbing dozens, or hundreds, of old pictures of Carson City off the internet, I finally spent a couple of dollars on eBay to buy one that I could actually hold. I got this postcard of downtown Carson City just last week.

Looking at the cars, this has to be in the 50s. Or 60s. Or 40s. I have no skill at identifying classic cars. But, as always, my eye goes to the buildings when I'm looking at pictures like this. On the far left is the Silver Spur casino, which became the Lucky Spur and then closed for 25 years. It reopened as Stew's Sportatorium, but now it's closed again for remodeling/retheming/whatever.

On the far right is the Pine Cone Cafe, on the corner where CaiE's Oriental Cafe now sits. This picture shows the old curved window the Pine Cone used to have. Some years after this the window was bricked over, and remained that way until just last year when work on CaiE's started. But the window was rebuilt to be square. I wish they would have made it curved, just as a nod to history.

And look at the fine print on the Pine Cone sign: "Not Recommended by Duncan Hines." That's a joke that wouldn't play today.

In the back you can see the other downtown buildings, but the angle is too steep to make them out very well. The "Cash Mercantile" is on the right, and on the left you can see (very fuzzy) the sign for the Old Globe, when it used to be on Carson Street, and behind that the brick facade of the Arlington Hotel that was torn down in the 1960s.

The one thing that's really visible in the distance is the sign for the Nugget, back when it was just a little tiny gambling hall and not the sprawling behemoth it is today. And of course you can see that Carson Street is only two lanes, with angle parking on either curb. Supposedly we're going back to this after the new freeway is completed, but I think there will still be more traffic than there was back then.

And now the problem I have: now that I've scanned in this picture and put it online, what do I do with the postcard itself? Seems like it's just taking up space now. Maybe I could sell it on eBay...