Tag: casinofandango

I noticed yesterday a crew working on the big outdoor marquee for the Casino Fandango. They removed the whole sign, leaving just the skeleton and a few hanging wires in place. I'll be keeping an eye on it to see where they're going with this.

In the last couple of weeks the Casino Fandango has started putting the final finishing coats of stucco and paint on their new Marriott Hotel tower. The exterior walls have gone through a lot of color changes lately, as all the different layers were applied. Gray, blue, yellow, white, gray again. It led to a whole patchwork being on display on South Carson Street. But now the actual colors are going up, a palette of muted browns and tans than blends in nicely with the hills behind the resort. It looks very nice, even if it doesn't match at all the blue and white facade of the parent casino next door. Oh well, it's not like the Fandango even tries to match itself, what with their recent Tuscan overlay on only one corner of the building.

When this is done it's going to be the nicest hotel in all of south Carson, and it will be right up there with the new Holiday Inn Express and Hampton Inn at the north end of town. It might even beat those too, as well, becoming the best place in town to stay. Of course if the Ormsby House were ever to be finished, they could give the Fandango a real run for their money. Or when Jethro's is open (not for two years at least, given an August 2008 start date), there will be some competition to the south. But for now, the Fandango just insists on stomping all their rivals, and making sure everything they build is the biggest and the best in town. Seems to be working for them so far.

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.

The advantage of having digital projectors in your movie theater, like the new Galaxy Theater at the Fandango does, is that you're not limited to showing movies. You can show anything on the big screen that can be hooked up to the projector, like, say, a TV broadcast. Unfortunately, the Galaxy is wasting this technology by using it to show football, but there are plenty of other uses for it. Imagine them screening the Oscars in one of their auditoriums, or something like a M.A.S.H.-level TV show finale.

And it doesn't even have to be TV. They could easily screen the work of local filmmakers in there. Many independent films are shot and edited digitally these days, but the final step of putting it to film can be cost prohibitive. With a digital cinema, the movie can be fed directly into the projector, eliminating all that expense. The Galaxy could put on a film festival comprised entirely of films from Carson area directors, or run the work of high school film students up on the big screen. Once you've gone digital it opens up so many opportunities for you, and this Monday Night Football screening shows that the Galaxy is willing to step at least a little bit out of the box. Now let's see how much further they're willing to go.

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.

From the Douglas Times comes an article on the progress of the Galaxy Theater at the Casino Fandango, and how it's set to open this Friday, August 3rd. This movie theater will be the only all-digital affair in Northern Nevada, which means it doesn't use film or standard projectors. Instead all the movies are stored on a computer, and a digital projector, like the kind you'd run Power Point off of, is used to show the movies. This means no scratches, no pops, no broken film. And the film won't be running backwards, like what happened to me at the Sparks drive-in a couple of weeks ago.

This theater is also sure to put the Northgate 10 out of business, or at least cut back on its business enough that it will end up relegated to second-run movies. And, I can't say I'm too sorry about that. The Northgate may have been a nice theater once, way back when it first opened with just four screens. But that was a long time ago. They've since added six closets in the back that can hardly be called "theaters", and the place is just falling apart. Maybe there will be enough North Carson residents who don't want to drive all the way to the Fandango to keep them limping along, but it won't be pretty. Better to put them out of their misery.

The article also touches on the other projects the Fandango has going on, most of which have been covered to death here. The hotel, the casino expansion, the sky bridge over Curry Street.

Oh, and speaking of the sky bridge over Curry, contributor Joe Reinbolt sent in this photo, fresh off the presses, of the actual sky bridge being hoisted into place just hours ago. Thanks, Joe!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've done a construction update post, so let's take a look around town and see what the builders have been up to.

I've been watching the work at Fifth and Stewart for a couple of months now. In that time they took what used to be a grassy field on the northeast corner of the intersection, plowed it under, and built the foundation for what looked like a pretty large building. I wasn't expecting how large it would be, though, until a couple of weeks ago when they started putting up the wall panels.

I'm thinking this is an expansion to the State Printing Office, which is right next door and which this new building actually touches. This two story beast is really going to change the landscape of this intersection.

Bodine's Casino has been working on the ground floor and parking garage for months and months now, and there's not much visible progress to show. But they did put up these signs at the corner advertising the fact that, yes, the new casino will keep the Bodine's name.

The First Presbyterian Church has been steadily working on their new expansion along Division Street.

The concrete for the floor has been poured, and you can see that it makes a semicircle around a central spot, presumably where the pulpit will be. The walls should start going up soon.

The Carson-Tahoe Quail Park is almost finished framing up its first building, and a second one has been started in the background.

The Marriott Hotel at Casino Fandango is almost done with framing too. Just a bit more to go on the roof, then they'll probably start putting on a layer of stucco.

And finally, construction is starting on the last empty parcel left in the Carson Valley Plaza. This is one of the lots in the middle of the parking lot, right next door to the Pita Pit building they just put up last year.

Already Qdoba Mexican Grill has been announced as one of the tenants, and the rest of the space is probably still unspoken for.

There's been a bunch of construction happening all along my daily commute into town, so I think it's time to roll up all the updates into one post here and check in on the progress.

First, the Bodine's Casino, at the corner of 395 and Clear Creek. Work on the basement parking garage is finished, and now they're laying the main casino floor on top of it. This work they're doing here is what's going to be at "ground level" of the new casino. Once they finish with the floor they should be able to start building upwards, and the casino itself will begin coming together.

Right next door to Bodine's, the Carson City Fairgrounds is getting a complete makeover. This multi-million dollar project is kind of a side effect of the casino project, a promise the original developer made to improve the fairgrounds with a new rodeo arena and other facilities. And even though the original developer backed out of Bodine's, the new developer kept the promise. Hence all the work that's being done here to rebuild.

Ribiero's new Carson-Tahoe Quail office/retail complex still only has one building underway, but the framing on that building is nearly complete. This is right next to Albertson's, on the site of the old Oasis Trailer Park.

Of course the Casino Fandango always seems like it has hundred of new projects going on at any one time. Here, the new hotel tower is getting its fourth, and final, floor framed up. After this they'll top it off with a roof, then start on the interior.

This Marriott Courtyard is supposed to open late this year.

Work on the facade and the interior of the movie theater is still continuing. We're getting close to opening day; probably less than two months away now.

And steel is rising on the casino expansion and sky bridge at the southwest corner of the Fandango. This steel skeleton now dwarfs the parking garage, and even dwarfs the new hotel in sheer height. This building will house the escalators that will take you up and over Curry Street so you can easily get to the movie theater from the casino.

The expansion to the First Presbyterian Church has finally started construction. Last year the whole church was in danger of being demolished, but after negotiations with the city, only the back part was torn down last January to make way for a new sanctuary. The foundation for that new sanctuary has been poured, and the cinder block walls should start rising any day now.

And finally, for the update that isn't, here's a photo of the Ormsby House, sitting as forlorn as ever. I still see people on the site, and there are work lights inside, so I hold out hope that work is actually progressing on the interior of the building. But from the outside, there is literally nothing going on. I think there's even an actual tumbleweed blowing by the building in this picture.

And on that down note, we'll end this update. If you have any pictures of construction happening in other parts of town, don't hesitate to send them in!

I'd say that by far the most interesting construction projects in town are going on at the Casino Fandango. And it seems like they keep adding more, like every week they're working on something new. It's all supposed to be done by "early 2008", so let's take a look at what they've got cooking this week.

The Movie Theater

The new movie theater is probably the most exciting part of the whole project. For years now the Northgate Cinemas has had a monopoly on movie-going in Carson City, but going there is not a good experience. It's dirty and run-down, and the fact that it's the only choice in Carson is pretty sad. This new theater is supposed to open in just about a month, and I predict it's going to kill the Wallace Northgate. Like, they'll have to start showing second-run movies for a dollar after this Galaxy Theater opens.

They're doing the last little bits of decorative shaping on the outside, and they're probably working just as fast inside too.

The Hotel

The new four-story Marriott Courtyard is quickly taking shape on the grounds of the old RV lot. They're on the third floor now, framing up the walls, and the whole thing is supposed to be open and ready for occupancy in the fall of this year.

Curry Street

The good news is, after months of being closed, Curry Street has been repaved, striped, and is now open to traffic all the way through. It was just a couple of years ago I can remember this stretch of Curry being little more than a dirt trail, almost too rough for my car to handle. Now it's modern and smooth. I guess it has to be to handle all the movie theater traffic.

The bad news is, now the intersection of Koontz and Curry needs to be repaved, so it's probably going to be closed off and on and in pieces for the entire month of June. Right now you can travel all the way through on Curry Street, but Koontz is blocked off. Expect this to change over the next few weeks as Curry Street has to close again to finish the paving job.

Casino Expansion

The last piece of the Fandango puzzle is this expansion they're building at the southwest corner of the building. Until now the Fandango has been content to remain within the four walls of the original Supply One building. But it's time for them to break out, and they're starting with this corridor at the back of the building.

They seem to be building the expansion in two phases. First they're building this part, which will reach from the casino to Curry Street, then whisk visitors up an escalator and over a sky bridge to the movie theater. This will make it easier for patrons to take in dinner at one of the Fandango's restaurants and then grab a show afterwards, all without having to brave the traffic of Curry Street.

This will only be Carson City's second sky bridge, after the one that the Ormsby House has built. This will be the first one to actually carry the public, though, since nobody's going to be setting foot in the OH for a couple of years still.

Then phase two of the expansion looks to be a triangular extension in the very back of the casino building, meeting up with the part they're building now. I can only guess this will be room for more slots, but who knows what else they have up their sleeves.

So that's what's going on at the Fandango this week. Between this, the new Bodine's that's still being built, and the proposed Jethro's Casino just a mile away, south Carson is really establishing itself as a gaming hotspot. Check back next week to see what other new projects they've started.

There's always something exciting going on at the Casino Fandango. Their expansion plans have been active nearly non-stop since they opened in 2003. And right now they have a couple of big projects going on at once. One of them is this, the new hotel tower they're building on the site of the old RV dealership.

Work is progressing on the second story as the walls are framed up for the hotel rooms.

They're also getting close to the end of construction on their new movie theater. The structural work is finished, so now they're working on cosmetic details, like this swooping curve that's going to stand out over the main entrance.

And this, I really don't know what's happening here. This is the empty space at the bottom of the hill between Curry Street and the back wall of the casino. I keep hearing about a casino expansion that's in the works, 24,000 additional square feet, so maybe this is prep work for all of that. And it could include some kind of bridge over Curry Street to safely bring people to the movie theater. I really don't know, but it looks exciting, whatever it is.

And finally, inside the building they're going to be opening a new Italian restaurant this summer. They just never stop, do they?