Tag: douglas

Carson City, or I should say Douglas County, is getting a new Qdoba restaurant soon. Qdoba is part of the wave of "fast casual" Mexican restaurants that have hit Reno in recent years, along with Baja Fresh and Bajio. Places like this are a good balance between going out for a full sit-down meal, like you would at El Charro or Mi Casa Too, or grabbing some overprocessed crap at a place like Taco Bell or Del Taco. The ingredients are fresh, you get your order fast, and while you're not paying 59 cents for a taco, they don't charge $12 for a combo plate either.

Qdoba is the first one of the trio I mentioned to break free of Reno and make their way down south to our area. Even though, out of the three, it's probably my least favorite. I'd be much more excited about seeing a Baja Fresh or Bajio in this space. But, since we're not getting those (not yet, anyway), Qdoba is a perfectly fine substitute. It's always fun to get a new and different place to eat, and I'm sure we'll be seeing the inside of this Qdoba more than I expect.

This construction also marks the last bit of empty space available in the Carson Valley Plaza. When they first built it four years ago, they had left a few pads open for future development. And one by one, they've all been filled in. We never got the sit-down restaurant I was hoping for, something to compete with the Chili's across the street, and there are only a couple of places in the whole shopping center that are local, non-chain restaurants. But there are a lot more dining choices than we had five years ago, so that's something to be thankful for.

I expect Qdoba to be open before the end of the year, at the rate they're building it. More tenants should be filling in the empty storefronts by then too.

It looks like the Record Courier in Gardnerville is planning on publishing a big coffee table book of historic pictures of Douglas County and the Carson Valley. They published one seven years ago, and the Carson Valley Historic Photo Album they created in 2000 turned out to be a pretty awesome book. I'd say you need to get down to the Douglas County Library and check it out to look for yourself.

This new book sounds like they're going to focus on more recent photos, mostly ones from the 40s, 50s and 60s. From what I can tell they're still gathering photos, so there's no release date for the book yet, but they are taking pre-orders at a reduced price. The announcement and order form are here (in PDF form).

They're also putting out a call for Valley residents to come forward with pictures they think would be good for the book. And to that end they're holding three public scanning sessions next week, where you can bring your photos to them, and they'll zip them through a scanner in seconds. They don't guarantee that the pictures will make the book, but there are sure to be some gems that turn up this way.

The scanning sessions are listed here (also in PDF).

Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Carson Valley Museum
1477 U.S. Highway 395 N
Gardnerville, NV (775)782-2555

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Genoa Courthouse Museum
2304 Main Street
Genoa, NV (775)782-4325

Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Carson Valley Museum
1477 U.S. Highway 395 N
Gardnerville, NV (775)782-2555

A few thoughts about this project:

* I love it, and I'm probably pre-ordering a copy
* I think they should put up a website with all the photos, even the ones that didn't make it into the book. Especially the ones the public brings in.
* I'm jealous and I want all these pictures for my own online history photo gallery that I'm building.
* The name of the book, Looking Back, is the same name I picked for my own online history photo gallery, which is still in development. Looks like I might have to change it.

It seems some Minden residents aren't happy with the plans for the Minden Gateway Center commercial center, which would feature dining, shopping, and a three-story hotel at the corner of Hwys 395 and 88 at the north end of town. At issue specifically is the hotel, which under the current plans is practically being built in people's backyards, blocking their view of, well, everything, as well as giving hotel guests a direct view into their kitchens and bedrooms.

The hotel is in blue, green is a supermarket, red is a drug store.

It would be a shame to see the whole deal fall through just because of this, though. Hopefully the developer is open to making a few changes to make the neighbors happy. There have been plans tossed around for that intersection for decades now, but these newest ones are the first ones that really smell real to me. Long-timers will remember that for years there was a sign at the corner advertising "Coming Soon - Safeway!" The sign, I think, was even replaced with a newer one once, but Safeway never arrived. And across the street, next to where the Minden Medical Center now sits, there were plans for a large hotel/casino resort to anchor the north end of town and provide competition for CVI's customers. All of those projects fell though. The Minden Gateway has some momentum behind it right now, but this pushback from residents might slow it down a bit. Plus, there's the fact that the footings of the new Bully's Sports bar, which was being built next door to the new Arby's, have remained half-poured and neglected for months now, which makes me think even that small project died. Something big like the Minden Gateway might just be another failed project that we talk about five years from now, saying "remember when" as we look out over a weed-strewn empty lot.

Clearing the land for MGC, November 28, 2006.

So I guess I'm not the only one who thought that having a casino named Jethro's just one block from a casino named Bodines might lead to a little confusion. But the article in the Nevada Appeal today is not about Max Baer Jr's problems with the Bodines name, it's about CBS thinking they own the name forever, in perpetuity, for any possible type of business. And the owner of Bodines, Mike Pegram, rightly telling them to go screw.

So it seems that CBS was willing to overlook the fact that there's been a restaurant named Bodines in Carson City for 20 years. They probably didn't even know it existed. But now that the name is being hoisted onto a new casino, being built on the same land, suddenly they have a problem with it. They claim they own the rights to that name because of the Beverly Hillbillies TV show, and any use of it goes against their trademark. Of course this is ludicrous, because Bodines has been there forever and took the name from a business partner, not from TV. The owners of Bodines have responded that they're not changing their name, which I applaud them for.

And I'm sure the only reason this is an issue at all is because of the remarkable coincidence that Max Baer Jr chose the same part of town to build his Jethro's Casino in. Max does get a chance to chime in at the end of the article, saying that it's unfair for them to use that name because it's his name, and they're trying to ride his coattails.

"Since 1962, I have been known as Jethro Bodine," he said. "People come up to me all the time and call me Jethro or call me Bodine. I have been indoctrinated with that name so much so that it stopped my career as an actor. I couldn't get jobs as an actor because people thought I was Jethro Bodine. I don't know how much more familiar you could get with that name."

Yeah, my name's Scott but I'm not going around trying to stop people from making toilet paper. Sometimes you just have to realize there are coincidences in life, and suck it up.

The good news is that NDOT has a plan in the works to build a six-lane freeway through the Carson Valley, with overpasses, real interchanges, and frontage roads running along either side. The bad news is that it isn't going to be built until the year 2030. So just stick around another 23 years, and all your traffic problems will be over.

Of course the problem with this is that every second that ticks by, the costs of building such a freeway go up. So if you think it would be expensive to build now, just wait 23 years and see what the price tag looks like. So this is probably going to turn into another Carson City freeway fiasco, where it takes 50 years to get built and costs hundreds of times what it would if they had just stopped dithering and built the thing.

But at least we're getting our cable barrier, so that will stopgap everything for the next 23-50 years.

I thought this went out with lava lamps and pet rocks, but apparently not. Douglas County this week has been chip sealing Johnson Lane, apparently in a desperate bid to get residents to hate the county road department even more.

If you've never heard of chip sealing, consider yourself among the more fortunate. It's what road departments do when a street needs to be repaved, but they're too cheap and lazy to do it right. It basically involves spraying a layer of oil on the road, then dumping a bunch of little rocks on top of it. The rocks that stick to the oil become the new road surface. The ones that don't end up in your windshield.

Chip sealing is about the cheapest form of resurfacing a road that's out there, and that's why you see it in use so much. Or at least you used to see it. There hasn't been a lot of chip sealing in the area lately that I've been aware of, but now that Johnson Lane has been done I know it's still in use and it's still thought of as a good idea for big projects.

You can see in the picture above the amount of dust that gets kicked up when you're driving on a freshly chip sealed road. Along with that dust there are also loose rocks being thrown everywhere. And even after the road has "cured" and all the loose rocks have been swept away, you still have to deal with the other side effects of chip sealing. It creates just about the ugliest road surface imaginable, a dull grey with millions of little pock marks. It's also one of the noisiest surfaces out there, as your tires run over all those little tiny rocks and their little tiny sharp edges. In the mood for needing new tires?

There are better alternatives, but I guess they were too costly. A fresh layer of asphalt is the best, of course, but also the most expensive so I can see why they wouldn't go that way. But there are a variety of other ways to surface a road, including one of my favorites, slurry sealing, where the rocks are mixed in with the oil to form a kind of chunky peanut butter that is spread over the road. It forms a much smoother, much quieter surface that's actually black (my fault for being a traditionalist and wanting my roads to be black). Plus, the rocks are trapped in the tar, so there's no dust and no flying debris.

But, chip sealing is what they chose, so chip sealing is what we have to live with. I'm just glad I don't drive Johnson Lane very much.

Max Baer Jr's fight to get his Beverly Hillbillies casino approved in Douglas County hasn't been much of a fight at all. After his plan was mostly approved by the Douglas Planning Commission last month, he had to go up against the County Commission this week for final approval. And, he got final approval, including approval for the two hotel towers that the Planning Commission had said no to.

So it looks like this time Jethro's casino is actually going to get built. Or, at least, all his excuses have been taken away from him this time, so if the project falls through for a third time, he'll have no one else to blame. So now it's time to see if Jethro can actually do it, and actually get the thing built.

Highway 395 through the Carson Valley is basically a freeway. The fact that the state won't pay the money to build overpasses and make it official doesn't really matter. People use it to commute between Carson City and Minden at high speeds, and there are only a few cross streets that meet up with it. It's a freeway, and people use it like a freeway.

Freeways of course have accidents, because with that many cars traveling at those kinds of speeds it's inevitable that a couple of them are going to smash into each other. And a freeway that's not officially a freeway is going to have even more accidents, just because it doesn't have the built-in safeguards that a real freeway has, like controlled access at the intersections. That's why the stoplight at Stephanie was so important to get built; it's a poor substitute for an overpass at the intersection, but it's better than people darting out into traffic whenever they feel like it.

So collisions at the intersection are one big danger of a highway like 395, but the other big danger has proven to be just as deadly. 395 is a divided highway, but there's nothing stopping cars from crossing the median and ending up facing oncoming traffic. The median is just a big dirt ditch. At the north end of the valley, it's a fairly flat ditch, but the further south you go the more steep the sides get. Almost to the point where, if you hit that ditch down by Muller Lane, it acts as a ramp and launches your car into the air. Then you find yourself dropping onto oncoming traffic from above, instead of just meeting them head-on. Talk about a nasty accident.

Surprisingly, this is one problem that the state has actually decided to tackle. This fall, NDOT will be installing a cable barrier down the middle of the highway, stretching all the way from Muller Lane to Jacks Valley Road. The barrier will catch any cars that do make their way into the median, and stop them from crossing over into the other lanes.

Now, the cable barrier is a controversial choice. It was picked instead of the more conventional concrete Jersey barrier because of the cost, I'm sure. Concrete walls can cost 50% more than a cable barrier, and a wall would also affect the drainage in the ditch, something that was pointed out in the article. But cable barriers have plenty of opponents, mostly motorcycle riders, who contend that this kind of barrier can slice you in half, or even thirds, if you hit it just right. There also seem to be some very vocal lawyers who have a bone to pick against cable barriers, although you always have to question a lawyer's motives. Other studies show that cable barriers are safer, because they have some flexibility to them so it's like your car being caught in a net instead of slamming into a wall.

I guess the real test will be when the barriers actually get installed, and people start running into them. Whatever the result, it's got to be more favorable than having those cars jump into the oncoming lanes, doubling the chances for tragedy.

With all the flap that's been going on about Jethro's Casino being built up in the hills across from Wal*Mart, another big casino project has been able to slip by almost unnoticed, until the Nevada Appeal highlighted it today.

The Brownstone GoldTown Hotel and Casino is being planned for the corner of South Sunridge Drive and Hwy 395. If I'm right, this is on the piece of land next to the Silver City RV Park that has been rumored to be getting a casino for about a decade now. Unlike Jethro's, this casino will definitely be down in the Carson Valley, and depending on how tall their 300-room hotel is, it could possibly be seen from all over the valley. Although I'd imagine the same restrictions that Jethro is currently fighting also apply to this Sunridge site, so the owners of GoldTown have probably designed their building to fit within the county guidelines, thereby avoiding all the trouble Jethro's gotten into. That means a short, squat hotel complex, rather than a big tower.

Construction is supposed to start by the end of the year, with Phase One open in 2009.

So this marks the third big casino project for the Indian Hills area. GoldTown will be at the bottom of the south slope, Bodine's will be at the base of the north slope, and Jethro's will be up on top of the hill. One of the commenters at the Appeal brings up the obvious question: "Just where are the patrons for these mega casino's coming from?"

Update: This photo shows where I think the project location is going to be. Just this side of the RV park you can see where the land was cleared away for a casino nearly a decade ago. We'll see if they have any better luck this time.

So the zoning change request for Jethro's Casino was approved on Tuesday, meaning most of the hurdles are cleared and they can start moving forward with phase one of the project. But it wasn't all good news for Jethro; the county denied some of his special variance requests, including the 200-foot tall oil derrick, the huge lighted sign that would have hung from it, and the 12-story hotel towers he hoped to build as phase two.

So we'll see now what Jethro's response will be. Will he be happy enough just that he's being allowed to get the thing built, finally, after fifteen years, or will he try to fight for some of these extras that were denied? The oil derrick isn't a killer for the project. It could still open and be successful without such a flashy beacon bringing people in. 200 feet? The Ormsby House is only 117, and you can see that from all over the Eagle Valley. I still have my doubts whether you could see the oil derrick from the Carson Valley, since it would be hidden on the opposite side of the hill, but at that height it just might be possible. Anybody have a red balloon and a 200-foot long string?

Now, denying the hotel towers is a bit more of a blow. I don't know what kind of market research Jethro did to show that those towers would bring in the people and always be full, but if there was a chance that they would be, the county turned down a lot of room tax revenue in exchange for aesthetics. I guess that's a trade-off they were willing to make, and one that Big George has to be happy about, but again: would that hotel tower have been visible from the Carson Valley? Where everyone is worried about ruining the views? Because that whole Topsy Lane area is kind of a "bonus" zone for Douglas County, a good place to put development that will be in the county, but not in the valley. Topsy Lane keeps the valley free of Wal*Marts and hotel towers, while still bringing in all the money that those ventures bring in. So I think that if you're going to let a developer go hog wild anywhere in Douglas County, Topsy Lane is the place to do it, while letting Carson City deal with the aesthetics.

So now Jethro's got the ball, and we'll see if he's willing to take these lumps and build a slightly smaller version of his dream, or if he'll keep on moving.