Tag: minden

The Carson Valley farmer's markets are coming back this summer. Dates have been announced.

Minden Farmers Market opening day May 20

The Minden Farmers Market opens May 20 and will be open every Tuesday from 4-8 p.m. through summer on Esmeralda Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets. Information, Roxanne Stangle, 782-2444.

Farmers Market at Lampe Park opens May 21

The Lampe Park Farmers Market offers an abundance of seriously fresh produce and a variety of food, farm, and dirt-oriented items. The market features flowers, perennial plants, fresh bakery items, outdoor décor and gifts. The farmers’ market will be open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays at Lampe Park in Gardnerville. Information at the Douglas County Recreation Division, 782-9828.

These two markets open two full weeks before the Carson City Farmers Market, which this year begins on June 4th.

With all the issues going on in the world with rising food prices and rising oil prices, the "local foods" movement is starting to gather a lot more steam and attention.There have been special articles about it in the Nevada Appeal and Record Courier lately, and even celebrity chefs are starting to speak out. And we're lucky because here in the Carson area we're firmly located in the breadbasket of Nevada. Most of the rest of the state is miles and miles of unforgiving desert, but here were have rivers that bring some life to the land, the Carson River, Walker River, and Truckee River. A lot of agriculture is focused around these rivers, in Fallon, in Fernley, in the Mason and Smith Valleys. In the Carson Valley much of the green land is given over to grazing cattle, but there are scattered plots that are dedicated to growing crops. And the best place to go to get all of this local produce is to the farmer's markets.

There is another option, though, if you're not in the mood to hunt through the market to find the best produce. It's called Community Supported Agriculture, and here in Northern Nevada we've had it for a couple of years at least. In essence, by signing up with a CSA you get a "subscription" to a produce delivery service. You pay one flat fee up front at the beginning of each season - spring, summer, and fall, and then each week a basket full of produce is delivered with your name on it. This produce is all grown on local farms, and the contents of the basket change throughout the year as different fruits and vegetables fall in and out of season. So in May you'd start getting a variety of spinach and lettuce, then in June peas and carrots start coming into season so those start showing up in your basket. And it continues all the way through December when you're getting potatoes and squash. And because it's all locally grown, your money is staying in Northern Nevada and helping out our farmers here.

The big CSA in our area is Great Basin Basket, which can be found at www.greatbasinbasket.com. There you can sign up for your shipments (the spring subscriptions are already sold out, so the earliest you can sign up for is Summer). I also found an article in the RGJ about Great Basin Basket, as well as the option to start a garden of your own. And, I just discovered a new-to-me blog, Local Food Northern Nevada, which is all about seeking out local food in our area. And of course they're subscribers to Great Basin Basket.

So if you're looking to have a summer full of real food, check out some of these options for eating food that's been grown in Nevada.

Moving a post office can be a big undertaking. And the first thing you have to do is find a new site, and that is the process Minden is involved in now. Their post office has outgrown its current location along Hwy 395 across from CVI, so they're looking for a new spot. And so far they've identified four possible locations. Two are on Monte Vista drive, which is out behind the Minden Medical Center, near Winhaven. A third site is an empty lot along County Road, and the fourth possibility would be to locate it in the new Minden Gateway center. I think the Gateway center makes the most sense; you want your post office located where it's not too far out of the way. The Gateway center is poised to be the biggest retail development in town, if it lives up to all its expectations. Plus it's in a great location, and seems to be a natural place for a post office.

Sounds like the final hurdle has been crossed to getting the C.O.D. Casino in downtown Minden built. The county commission gave full approval to the project on Thursday, and out of everyone in attendance at the meeting, there was not one person in opposition.

These gas pumps are something of a local landmark...wonder if they'll be incorporated in the new design.

Overall this seems like a good adaptive reuse project. Downtown sure needs a shot of something to pump some life back into it, and casinos have proven themselves to be good at getting bodies in seats. The hope is that some of them will decide to go for a stroll on the way from the slot machine to the car, and revitalize the rest of the area.

Pioneer Auto Parts, future home of Schat's Bakery.

Construction should start soon, but I can't imagine this opening until next year. Until then downtown will have to rely on its usual events: the Concerts in the Park, which should be starting up in a few weeks here, and the Farmers Market.

The other day I took a walk through downtown Minden and snapped a few pictures. You can view all the pictures at this link, or just checkout the slideshow below.

Minden I think has one of the nicest little downtowns around, partly because it's one of the few downtowns that doesn't have a major highway running right down the middle of it. So you can actually step out into the street and jaywalk without worrying about being run down. The downside is that it can be kind of dead most of the time, though. The town and county offices are both located downtown, along with a few private offices, so it's not like there's nobody downtown. But there are a few little lonely stores that seem like they wouldn't get much business, and one of the two restaurants downtown went out of business last fall. People don't come downtown for fun, they only come to work. Maybe all that will change with the coming of the C.O.D. Casino, which is still in the approval process. That project should pump a lot more people into the downtown area, but whether it will benefit any of the other businesses remains to be seen.

A new Italian restaurant has opened in Minden, Marcello's Ristorante & Bar. It is located on Ironwood Drive, right behind Danny's restaurant. It takes over the space formerly occupied by Villa San Marcel. That space is quite a revolving door; we'll see if Marcello's can make it. Here's the menu.

As an addendum to the piece I wrote about the unhappy homeowner in Minden the other day, I took a drive through the La Costa development to see it firsthand.

A typical street in La Costa. The look is inspired by Tuscan villages.

La Costa is located on the outskirts on Minden, on what used to be cattle grazing land. But then again, all of Minden was cattle grazing land at one time. La Costa is just west of Winhaven, off of Ironwood Drive. See a map here.

One thing you notice driving around La Costa is how many empty lots there still are. I'd say probably only 30-40 percent of the lots have been built on, if even that. The neighborhood opened in 2006 with a projection of 138 total homes to be built. I didn't do a hard count, but I'd say maybe 50 have been built, leaving a lot of open space. This is probably because of the housing slump that has hit recently. And tellingly, I didn't see any new units under construction.

The house in question.

The disgruntled homeowner makes no attempts to keep his displeasure a secret. His house has a bright yellow For Sale sign out front, with his website prominently displayed. Around the corner he has parked an SUV, also sporting a bright yellow sign touting the construction defects and pointing people to his website.

A moving billboard.

He's serious about getting the word out, and he's serious about warning others. Syncon can't be too happy about this, but as long as everything he's saying is true, there's not a lot they can do about it. Ryan Jerz makes the same point.

Looks like there's someone not too happy with their new Syncon Home. This fellow bought a house in Minden's La Costa development (located just west of the Winhaven neighborhood) last summer, and apparently has been beset ever since with problems he attributes to shoddy workmanship. He's started up a website, www.asynconhome.info, which is little more than a litany of complaints set against a strikingly yellow background. If you want read that site, find a comfortable seat because it does go on and on. But I suppose if I bought a brand new house and there were this many problems with it, I might get vocal about it too.

The project to reopen the old C.O.D. Garage in Minden as a casino has been chugging along steadily, having to work its way through several approval and zoning hurdles. It sounds like everyone wants the project to go through (except the owners of Sharkey's and CVI), because it will bring more people to downtown Minden, but there's just so much red tape to cut through to get something like this off the ground. The latest issue has been the amount of parking required for a project of this size, compared to how much parking is available in the downtown area. The Douglas County Planning Commission approved a variance this week that would cut down on the number of parking spaces required. In exchange the developers will pave and stripe the empty lot where the old Pioneer Motor Company livery stable used to be, right across the street at the corner of Esmeralda and 395. Right now people park on that lot during special events such as the Minden Park concerts and the Parade of Lights, but because it's just a big dirt area it turns into a free-for-all, with people parking everywhere. Striping it will improve the efficiency, allowing up to 58 cars to park there. And it will be public parking, not C.O.D.-only parking.

Now if the new casino is super popular, this lot will fill up quickly, leading to even worse parking problems downtown. But the Minden town board has decided this is a good problem to have, having too many people downtown. So they're agreed to let that be a problem they'll deal with when they come to it. There's still the possibility of putting a parking garage downtown.

It's been quite a while since I made it down to Minden to drive around and see some of the progress on a couple of projects going on down there. I went last week, and I was super surprised to see this.

This is the new Greater Nevada Credit Union building, being constructed right at the border between Gardnerville and Minden. GNCU has had a branch on this site for nearly 20 years, in an old office building that used to be there. They tore it down last year so they could build something new. I wasn't expecting it to look quite this striking. I like it now, but check back in 30 years and see if it's become outdated.

I also cruised by the location of the new Minden Gateway Center, to find that they're well into the job of moving dirt around, getting ready to start construction. This land at the corner of Hwy 395 and Hwy 88 will soon be home to a retail development and a hotel.

This project is still controversial, mostly because of how close the proposed hotel is to the condos that are right next door. In this last picture, you can see the condos, and how the construction site is right there.

The hotel is going to be located right about where that black fence is. You can see why the residents there would be upset. The matter, as far as I know, is still in court, but it hasn't stopped the developers from starting preliminary work on the center.

It seems like it was really recently that the new Port of Subs in Minden opened, in the back half of what used to be the old Wendy's building. In fact it was on November 22, 2006, 16 months ago. But we went there today to get some lunch, and were met with a bit of a surprise.

"This Store Is Closed"
Please visit one of our other restaurants located nearby. We apologize for any inconvenience.

So I guess the Port of Subs didn't fly. You'd think it would have, being right next to the high school and getting all that lunch business. But maybe that wasn't enough, or maybe the competition from Quizno's and Subway was too much. Wendy's wasn't able to make it in that location, after all. It must be a cursed building. Maybe Starbucks, which is still open in the front half, will have better luck.

Looking inside, you can see that Port of Subs took everything with them when they left. Even the counter. They left the ficus, though.