Debating the role of the Master Plan, and evaluating the J Resort Festival Grounds

Questions of context, priorities, and planning in the review of development projects

Wow, the Ward 1 NAB meeting had an amazing turnout last week! I hope this week’s meetings can see the same level of attendance. Here’s the full rundown.

City of Reno meetings: Week of February 17, 2025

You can view all of the week’s scheduled meetings, agendas and supplementary materials here. Here’s what’s been posted as of today (2/17). There may be more.

• Tues., 2/18 at 5:30pm – Ward 2 Neighborhood Advisory Board (agenda)

• Wed., 2/19 at 5:30pm – Urban Forestry Commission (agenda)

• Wed., 2/19 at 6pm – Reno Planning Commission (agenda)

• Thurs., 2/20 at 6pm – Ward 4 Neighborhood Advisory Board (agenda)

• Fri., 2/21 at 11am - Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board (agenda)

That RAAB agenda was literally just posted and includes discussion of the GSR’s TIF application. Both NABs will discuss the proposed ordinance to allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) throughout the city, plus presentations about development projects in their wards, so be sure to take a look at those full agendas if you live in Wards 2 and 4. And check out the full schedule of ADU presentations here.

The Planning Commission agenda has a number of big-ticket items, including these:

• Item 5.2 – a CUP application for live entertainment outside of standard hours at the 1Up bar at 214 West Commercial Row (Staff Report)

• Item 5.3 - a CUP application for the J Resort Festival Grounds (Staff Report)

I have some thoughts about the J Resort proposal, but first, I think it’s important to discuss a conversation that occurred at the February 12 Reno City Council meeting about the role that the Master Plan should play in reviewing development projects. It revealed a stark difference of opinion that will serve as critical background not just for the review of Jacobs’ proposal but for any future applications under review or appeal.

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Development Projects and Reno’s Master Plan

The Staff Report for item D.1 on last week’s Council agenda had only this description:

“This agenda item is an informational overview on the ReImagine Reno Master Plan. The information will help to better inform Councilmembers on the purpose of the master plan and how it can best be used to help guide decision making.”

Now, I’ve devoted a lot of space over the past four years to how development decisions are made by the City of Reno, specifically by the Planning Commission and City Council—as well as administratively (out of public view) by City staff.

And although framed as a straightforward refresher, this item turned into one of the most revealing (and to me, somewhat troubling) glimpses I’ve yet witnessed into the divergent opinions held by some of our Councilmembers and City staff about the basis on which the Planning Commission and City Council should make decisions about development projects—and specifically whether they should be basing any of them on anything in Reno’s current Master Plan, titled Reimagine Reno.

I highly recommend This is Reno’s overview of what transpired:

• “Reno council members criticize planning commission, argue over master plan during heated meeting” (Kelsey Penrose, This is Reno, 2/14/25)

You can view the presentation slides from Development Services Assistant Director Angela Fuss here and watch the item for yourself starting here.

Although not stated outright, the impetus for this refresher (which ultimately turned into something of a rebuke and directive) was pretty clearly the series of discussions recently undertaken by the Reno Planning Commission regarding data centers.

As a reminder, three conditional use permits (CUPs) for data centers have been reviewed by that commission since December, with the following outcomes:

1. Webb Data Center – approved on December 18, 2024 by a 4-2 vote. This is the one where former City Manager Doug Thornley was representing the applicant and having side conversations with Reno City Attorney Karl Hall, as reported here. The approval was appealed to City Council, which upheld it on January 22.

2. Oppidan Data Center – denied on January 15 with a vote of 4-2. This denial has apparently been appealed and will be heading to City Council in March.

3. Keystone Data Center – approved on January 15 with a vote of 4-2.

And on Feb 5, the Planning Commission voted 4-2 to recommend that City Council adopt a moratorium (a temporary pause) on new data center permits. You can read about that here and view that full resolution here. Here’s its explanation of intent:

Making this recommendation is, of course, squarely within the purview of the Planning Commission, whose stated role is not only to review development projects in a public forum but to “serve and advise the City Council on urban planning including policy development, community design, natural resource conservation and enhancement, economics, housing, land use, population, streets, zoning, subdivision regulation, transportation, the comprehensive plan, etc.”

For its part, some City Councilmembers believe that data centers represent a unique enough use that they warrant a new text amendment to the City’s development code, something Councilmember Naomi Duerr proposed on January 8 (as I reported in my January 13 Brief). She brought that idea up just prior to the Council’s adoption of the “zoning code clean-up” edits that included the addition of “Data Center” as a distinct category in city code—an addition made administratively (i.e. without any public discussion or input) last winter (see p. 204 of the document here).

As Duerr explained, she thinks data centers might warrant the addition of special standards (as are implemented for other uses with special impacts), in this case regarding data centers’ high energy use (and potentially other features). I’ve linked in past Briefs to many recent articles about those impacts, and here’s yet another one:

• Data centers could 'quadruple' region’s electrical grid, NV Energy CEO says (Ray Hagar, Nevada Newsmakers, 2/15/25)

City staff has indicated that City Council will discuss potentially initiating the text amendment process concerning data centers at its Feb. 26 meeting.

So what’s the problem?

Apparently it has to do with whether and/or to what extent the Planning Commission and City Council can invoke anything stated in the Master Plan when deciding whether to approve or deny development projects (like data centers or anything else).

You likely know that in those reviews, those bodies can’t just approve or deny projects willy-nilly; they have to base their decisions on their ability to make a series of findings, which are clearly delineated in the code here, under 18.08.304 (e). There, you’ll see that number one on the list is “Consistency with the Reno Master Plan”:

The other findings are compliance with Title 18, mitigation of traffic impacts, providing a safe environment, and rational phasing plan. Specific types of permits require other specific findings, but they all include consistency with the Master Plan.

In some of their recent data center reviews, members of the Planning Commission invoked goals stated in the Master Plan to help explain how they could not make findings. You can read the minutes of the January 5 meeting, where they reviewed both the Oppidan (Item 6.3) and Keystone (6.4) Data Centers here, and, as finding number one dictates, weighed “competing plan goals, policies, and strategies.”

In her presentation, Ms. Fuss characterized the Master Plan as “high level policy document” that “does NOT regulate or require anything.”

Jonathan Shipman of the City Attorney’s office then weighed in with his own interpretation of whether the Master Plan could be invoked to deny a project, suggesting that in a “quasi-judicial” act like evaluating a conditional use permit, if a project has already been determined to be allowable via zoning, then the only remaining function of the reviewing body is not to implement the master plan, but to determine what if any conditions should be imposed on the project to mitigate any potential negative impacts.

Councilmember Kathleen Taylor found Shipman’s statement to be such a slam dunk that she said he should go and say that to the Planning Commission (and just to reinforce her point, she read a statement into the record at the end of the meeting expressing her lack of faith in that commission to do their job correctly).

However, Councilmembers Duerr and Meghan Ebert responded with a defense of invoking the Master Plan in project review, citing the City’s own required findings, as I quoted above. Consideration of the Master Plan isn’t somehow removed from the required findings, after all; it is a required finding.

Now, invoking the Master Plan when determining whether or not the findings can be met clearly requires specificity. After all, as Councilmember Reese pointed out, it may be possible to find sections of the Master Plan that both support and challenge any particular project. And that’s certainly the case, as we repeatedly see when developers cherry-pick the Master Plan for words and phrases that they believe support their projects (the City’s own Staff Reports generally list support, not conflicts, too).

But from what I’ve seen, the Master Plan gets invoked—as it has in the case of data centers—when the potential impacts of a specific project constitute a potentially significant departure from some of the Master Plan’s stated goals and priorities, warranting a comprehensive, public discussion that (as the findings require) weigh potentially competing goals, priorities, and strategies.

As Ms. Fuss admitted through a series of slides, the City’s priorities are constantly changing, along with societal and economic shifts, environmental factors, technological developments, community concerns, and more. When a project comes up that challenges a priority or goal stated in the Master Plan (and is brought into the public eye by, say, national media coverage, or vocal citizen advocacy), then discussion of that priority or goal seems more than warranted by the City’s own development code. It’s the specificity of references to sections of the Master Plan that, I would think, make them neither arbitrary nor capricious.

As Councilmember Duerr stated, the City never decided, for instance, that Economic Development was the highest priority, trumping all others. And the same could be said for anything that the City obviously values—housing, activating downtown, etc.

Projects require Conditional Use Permits (rather than proceeding by right) when they warrant discussion of CONTEXT—yes, the context of their physical location and of the people potentially affected, but also the context of this moment in time. As Councilmember Ebert stated, “None of these projects are on an island.” And, I would argue, it’s clear that the priorities most valued by one Councilmember or Planning Commissioner may not be prized as highly by another. And that’s okay. That’s why we have public bodies that can and should discuss these matters in a public forum where residents can weigh in and express their own values and beliefs, too.

The Master Plan itself states very clearly that it is to be used for both short and long-term planning, stating, “Moving forward, the Master Plan will help guide both day-to-day decision-making, short-term actions, and longer-term initiatives and strategies to achieve the community’s vision” (page 3). Chapter Five of the plan identified a number of “Priority Initiatives” intended to guide the community for the next 1-2 years, but it appears to have last been updated in 2021. And that’s what makes these conversations of competing goals and priorities so essential, in our ever-shifting city and world.

So maybe let’s encourage MORE discussion of those competing priorities, not less?

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J Resort’s proposed Festival Grounds (LDC25-00031) heads to the Planning Commission on February 19.

I was thinking a lot about those questions of priorities, and especially about context, both physical and temporal, when viewing Jacobs Entertainment’s application for a CUP to operate their proposed festival grounds, as presented to the Ward 1 NAB.

Notable in the renderings Jacobs showed was the complete absence of any physical context, depicting the surrounding neighborhood as some kind of nondescript void. How different would this rendering look with the actual neighborhood depicted?

Jacobs is applying for a CUP (an entitlement that runs with the land) in order to establish an outdoor recreational venue between Arlington Ave. and Ralston Street that can operate live entertainment outside standard hours, with a capacity of up to 15,000 people. Be sure to read the Staff Report with the City’s evaluation, and consult the agenda for Exhibits A-H, which include various maps, studies, plans, public comments, and more.

It’s my hope that the review of this application will be characterized by a robust discussion of precisely the issues I mentioned above—not just considering the findings related to traffic, safety, noise, etc. (although there is much to discuss there) but weighing overarching priorities and goals as relevant, considering not just those that would support the application, but those that might challenge it.

In their presentation to the Ward 1 NAB, the applicants quoted from the expired Downtown Action Plan, a document that was adopted in April 2017 to guide the City’s decisions about downtown development for the next 5-7 years (i.e. through 2024).

“3.1c. Tourism and entertainment. Encourage reinvestment in established casinos and the introduction of new uses and activities that strengthen Downtown’s appeal as a tourism and entertainment destination. Strive to make Downtown the location of choice within the region for annual events, cultural celebrations, and other community gatherings.”

I was one of many community advisors on that PUMA-authored plan, and looking back at it, I’m struck by how much downtown has changed in the intervening eight years—particularly in this area, where this site appeared as a development opportunity specifically associated with the mixed-use West 2nd Street District:

In 2017, the west boundary of the “Entertainment District” was, and remains, Ralston Street. The “Northwest Quadrant” beyond was described as "a mix of uses that include casinos, non-profits, medical offices, apartments, single family homes, retail, light industrial, and small businesses.” Downtown outdoor live entertainment was generally confined to Virginia Street (when closed for special events), Wingfield Park, and the ballpark. Other than the small stage on Harrah’s Plaza and occasionally the Sands’ pool, permanent casino entertainment venues were all located indoors.

But that’s why discussions like those of the Planning Commission and City Council are so important. The rapidly changing landscape of downtown Reno and its much-touted transformation clearly demonstrate the need for discussions that consider the ever-evolving context, weigh competing priorities, and recognize the need to update outdated plans like the 2017 Downtown Action Plan to reflect current conditions and concerns not just of residents, but of the churches and congregants, schools and students, businesses, and all those who make up the downtown population.

Can this happen at Wednesday’s meeting? I don’t know. If this venue were a public proposition, there would have had to be considerable public outreach to help better determine the extent of potential impacts and concerns. As a private application for a conditional use permit, the applicants sent postcards to nearby property owners and visited the Ward 1 NAB. Is that sufficient? What do you think?

You can make public comments during the meeting in person or via Zoom by registering here. To comment in advance, you can use the online form at www.reno.gov/PCPublicComment; email RenoPlanningCommission@reno.gov; or (if commenting on something that isn’t urgent) send a letter to the City of Reno Planning Commission, P.O. Box 1900, Reno, NV 89505.

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NEWS DIGEST: The Latest in Local Development

The development-related news keeps coming, so be sure to check out these links.

• Reno, Henderson, and Boulder City relay municipal woes to state lawmakers (Dana Gentry, Nevada Current, 2/10/25)

• Reno development squeezes 28 houses on 4 acres; neighbors feel ignored by city council (Jaedyn Young, Reno Gazette-Journal, 2/12/25)

• UNR readies for first tenants at downtown University Village (Kristen Hackbarth, This is Reno, 2/10/25)

• Study finds single adults need to make over $100,000 a year to live comfortably in Nevada (Jeffrey Meehan, Reno Gazette-Journal, 2/13/25)

• ‘We have to grow anyway’: The good and the bad of Northern Nevada’s economy (Jason Hidalgo, Reno Gazette-Journal, 2/14/25)

• What's next for Sundance Books mansion? Owner Nevada Museum of Art looking for right tenant (Carly Sauvageau, Reno Gazette-Journal, 2/15/25)

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Be sure to check out my Citizen Guide for helpful resources and links for anyone hoping to become more informed and engaged in issues related to urban development (& more) in Reno.

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