Tag: carsoncity

Our long national wait is over. Our new Trader Joe's grocery store, which can alternately be referred to as the Carson City, Douglas County, Clear Creek, Jacks Valley, or Indian Hills store, opened today! There apparently was a grand opening celebration at 9am, and when I swung by the place an hour and a half later the parking lot was packed. I didn't go inside myself, because my wife would have killed me if I went without her. But we're meeting tonight to go.

This is a great addition to Carson City's shopping selection, because Trader Joe's carries a lot of specialty foods that you can't get anywhere else in town, or that you can get but are priced super high. It's a perfect match with Wal*Mart, in fact, since there's practically no overlap in what they carry. I'll still be shopping at Wal*Mart, don't get me wrong, but there are several items that can only be had at Trader Joe's. So having them right next door to each other is actually a great idea.

In case you still don't know where the new Trader Joe's is located, it's in the Clear Creek Plaza shopping center, which is just across the Douglas County line south of Carson City. It's in the parking lot of the Wal*Mart store right there. Turn west on Topsy Lane, then go into the shopping center and look for Trader Joe's. I've marked it on the map here. (Don't worry if you follow that link; that's an old picture, and it's not a dirt lot anymore.)

While I was sifting through the slides at work I cames across a bunch of promo materials that Carson City Tourism put out in the early 1980s to get people to come to the area. These shots promoting the Ormsby House were just too good. I had to share.

The old front entrance, with the original portecochere. The tower itself looks like the Projects. Barely ten years old, and already it was in rough shape.

Pat and Vanna on the Grand Staircase.

There's something very uncomfortable and wrong about this picture.

"Want to order room service?"
"And then we can read Omni magazine!"

That carpet was buried in the New Mexico desert under eight feet of concrete.

He's only interested in the articles.

I sincerely hope that when the Ormsby House reopens, the rooms will be more tastefully appointed than this. Because there's a place for a chicken-basket-flower-pot, but not in a hotel with any number of stars.

I was rummaging around my company's data files today, and I came across these fantastic slides. They're aerial photos of Carson City, and I think the date on them is 1984. There weren't nearly as many as I would have liked, but the ones that were there were pretty cool.

I'm going to start with these shots of the Lompa Ranch. With all the talk lately about how the Lompa Ranch is going to be sold for development, I thought these photos did a good job of showing just how expansive the Ranch is. Plus, it's a lot of fun to scan the photo for details and try to discover what has changed over the last 22 years!

Let's dive in. Click on each photo for a huge blow-up.

© RCI

Here's a good overview of the ranch. Sure, this was taken 22 years ago, but things are largely unchanged since then. There's been development around the edges, mostly along Saliman Street, but the Ranch itself is still this big huge grassy area bisected by Fifth Street.

© RCI

The High School. In the distance of this shot you can see downtown Carson too, with the Ormsby House when it was still brown (and open) and the Kinkead Building. At the far right edge is Mills Park without the Pavilion, and Wild Bill's Motel on the corner where Walgreen's is now.

© RCI

This shot, further east, clearly shows all the natural drainage channels that have developed over the centuries as water from the mountains tries to escape to the river. They also give the Ranch a ready source of irrigation, making this part of the valley particularly suited to agriculture.

© RCI

More to the east, we come to the Nevada State Prison. When it was built, it wasn't a prison; rather it was a resort where the residents of Carson City could spend the day or the weekend relaxing in natural hot springs that bubbled up from the ground. It was also way out of town. It's still kind of remote, as you can see from this picture, but with today's roads and cars it's only a couple of minutes away from downtown.

Much of the ranchland in this photo has already been dug up to build the Carson City Freeway. Today there's a huge retention pond in the center of this view, and the right-of-way for the roadbed itself cuts through the right half of the image.

© RCI

At the far eastern end of the Ranch, we have the Carson City Wastewater Treatment Plant. Nasty stuff; you don't want to think about what goes on there. You can also see the intersection of Fifth and Edmonds, sans roundabout. And the bottom half of the picture is now completely taken up with houses.

So there have been changes in eastern Carson City over the last 22 years, for sure, but probably less than in other parts of town. The Lompa Ranch has been this big hulking mass of open space that has resisted development. But now that the family has put the land up for sale, this last empty bit of the valley will soon be filled in. It would be interesting to take to the skies in another 10 years and reshoot these photos, see exactly how much has changed.

For comparison, here's a more recent photo, from 2003.

© RCI

And just for a hell of a lot of extra fun, let's set the wayback machine to 1954.

Wicked. You're going to want to blow that one up for sure.

The Nevada State Railroad Museum is running their Santa Train this weekend. Come on down, bring the kids (or just bring yourself), and enjoy a ride on the steam train and an open house at the museum. It runs this Saturday and Sunday, December 9th and 10th, from 9:00am to 4:00pm.

The old Kmart building was sold last week to a retail developer. But everybody's keeping secret about the details, including who the buyer is, how much it sold for, and what kind of tenants might be moving in. So it's not so much of a story if we don't have the details, is it?

Carson City is bookended by big empty box stores, Kmart at the north and Wal*Mart at the south. Wal*mart, we know, isn't going anywhere. Jethro's going to hold onto that thing until he dies and then he'll have his body interred in the sporting goods aisle. But Kmart has always been ripe for development, even though the previous owner, Verizon, was more interested in selling it for a profit than in getting tenants in there.

I'm interested in watching what happens to the Kmart, because I used to work there. Also because it's been sitting empty for three and a half years now, and it's never good for any property to sit unused for so long. What's especially comic is the strip mall next door, which was built specifically to take advantage of the Kmart traffic. Parts of it are still sitting empty, having never been built out. Somebody's losing a lot of money on that one, and I bet they're the most anxious to see a new tenant in the anchor location.

There's supposed to be a press release soon from the new owners outlining what their plans are. All they'll say now is that it will be retail. I hope this really goes through, and we're not looking back two years from now, saying, "Whatever happened to those people who bought the Kmart building?"

I'm hearing about a wildfire in South Carson, but I'm stuck here in Douglas. Can anyone see the fire from where they are? Apparently it's along Curry Street by the Capital Ford dealership.

Update: Big mystery. I drove by today and saw no trace of fire. Did anyone else see the smoke plume?

Update: Thanks to a commenter, I found where the fire was. At the end of Oneida Street, right where it hits the mountain, was an abandoned mobile home on an empty lot. It burned last night, throwing up a huge plume of smoke.

I'm no arson investigator, but that looks like kids playing around to me. What else would cause an abandoned trailer to burst into flames?

It looks like we're getting an early Christmas present here in Carson City. Our new Trader Joe's has posted signs in the window announcing that they're going to open on December 8th, just a week and a half from now.

There were also several people in tonight frantically stocking the shelves, getting ready for opening day.

Can't wait!

It seems like every six to eight months we get an update on the saga of Jethro and his Wal*Mart. Today we got another report, and it's almost identical to every other one we get. JC Penney still won't let Jethro build his casino, but he still won't give up and sell the building to someone else. This years-long standoff is going nowhere fast, and it's just making Jethro into more of a joke the longer it lasts.

At least the building isn't completely empty. The article also catalogues the many uses that the building has been put to over the years, including a garden center, haunted house, batting cages, and even church services. But none of that blunts the fact that there is a list of stores stretching around the corner that would be a good fit for that building, and that the Casino Fandango, right across the street, has pretty much killed any kind of competition in the gaming space in that part of town. And soon the Fandango will have a movie theater, and hotel rooms, just like Jethro wanted for his place.

I think it's far past time for Jethro to give up and sell. I'd heard last year that he was looking at land in Douglas County to build his dream casino. Who knows? It might fly there. But any chance he had to put it in the old Wal*Mart building is gone, and the longer he keeps trying to make it happen, the worse it makes him look.

So Bodine's restaurant was torn down why again? Oh yeah, that's right - to build a casino. And it's been how long now that the site has been empty? Since June. So what's going on with the new casino? Becky Bosshart fills us in today at the Nevada Appeal.

Looks like the developer, the one that came up with the plans to put a casino on that site, and bought and demolished the restaurant that was the favorite of many, pulled out of the deal. He's now selling the land to another developer, who wants to do the same thing: build a casino. This is just what everyone was afraid of, an out-of-state developer making promises and then not living up to them. And this time, Carson was actually left with less than we started with, because Bodine's was taken away.

And the new developer promises they'll keep the plans pretty similar to what the original developer had come up with. But this new developer has never worked in Nevada before, and has never built or owned a casino. And it's going to take them anywhere from nine months to two years before they get their gaming license. So nothing's going to be happening to the land during that time. Makes you think that maybe they were a little premature in demolishing the restaurant?

They've been keeping the lights on inside the new Trader Joe's at night. This is good to discourage anyone from breaking in, but it's also good for letting us take a peek inside.