Placemaking, Micromobility, and You
Thoughts on the latest public sessions and surveys
In the last two weeks, the City has held public engagement sessions for two initiatives that I’ve been following in the Brief for more than a year: the Virginia Street Placemaking Study and the Micromobility Pilot Project. Both are coming to a close, with presentations to City Council coming up after a final round of public input. I attended both sessions—Placemaking in person on February 23, and Micromobility (via Zoom) on March 9. Each ended with an opportunity for the public to provide feedback on what they saw, and the online survey for the Placemaking Study closes on Sunday, March 12 at 5pm while public comments about the latest Micromobility Pilot Project update are being accepted through March 24.
There was a lot to absorb at both sessions, and I’m honestly still trying to sort through what they mean, how they relate to each other, and what their implications are for Virginia Street and the rest of downtown. So for now I’ll just explain where things stand and how you can contribute your thoughts, and I’m sure I’ll be circling back when each is scheduled for any action at City Council. Let’s start with the Placemaking Study, since Sunday (March 12) is the last day to submit feedback before the consultants formulate their final recommendations.
What would bring you to downtown Virginia Street?
As I previewed in my last Brief, the Gehl team was here on February 23 to present a number of design and programming concepts based on public input regarding the last round of “Vision and Goals” for downtown Virginia Street. They then opened up a survey intended to solicit rankings of these concepts from residents.
We learned that participation in Gehl’s second survey was much reduced from the first one. The first, asking residents to help them assess and define the current condition of Virginia Street, garnered more than 2,700 responses. The November survey asking residents for input on a number of broader concepts only garnered 481 responses online and 25 more in person. That input (plus stakeholder sessions and the team’s continued analysis) is what shaped the concepts just presented.
This final survey, open through March 12, asks residents to rank a series of specific concepts in order of preference. Mike Van Houten of Downtown Makeover has summarized how Gehl broke down the various ideas in his helpful piece called “GEHL Presents Recommendations to Public for Virginia Street Downtown,” and I highly encourage you to read through it and the entire PDF version of Gehl’s presentation before taking the survey. The PDF, video, and survey link are all on the City’s Placemaking web page here. The concepts as described in the survey are not self-explanatory, and even watching the presentation live it wasn’t possible to read everything on the slides that were shown in quick succession. Here’s an example.
The governing framework was a proposed vision statement:
Virginia Street is the backbone of the downtown neighborhood. It connects the city’s assets, is a platform for creativity, and it’s a safe and inviting place to walk or spend time for Renoites and visitors alike.
If we accept that as the end goal, then the question is how to transform Virginia Street into a place where that vision actually corresponds to reality.
There wasn’t any single overarching transformative concept to get us there, just a multitude of strategies that ranged from the obvious (adding abundant seating in public areas and placing a food vendor on City Plaza) to the more experimental (transforming a narrow section of the Circus Circus parking garage into “micro-retail” spaces facing the sidewalk). You can read through them all on slides 30-59. It’s a lot to absorb, so give yourself some time. (I found that the survey options sometimes grouped together concepts that I would have preferred to have evaluated separately, so be aware of that, and there’s space at the very end to write in some comments if you want to submit any additional clarifications or additions.)
There was much more emphasis than I expected on reconfiguring the street—and especially on installing bike lanes on either side of the vehicle lanes running north and south (the same configuration proposed by The ROW back in 2021. Fitting in those lanes would require eliminating the center vehicle turn lane, which was one of the reasons why consultants hired by the RTC in 2021 had advised against it. But Gehl apparently has analyzed neighboring streets and determined that they hold enough capacity to carry vehicles whose drivers decide not to take Virginia due to the expected traffic backups (and they say that slowing traffic down would help make Virginia a safer and more appealing destination, proposing to coordinate the six stop lights between First and Sixth Streets to make the already slow traffic even slower).
The recommendation to install bike lanes on Virginia has revived some concerns that the RTC might be abandoning plans for the long-planned cycle track on Center Street, something that wasn’t addressed. This is Reno discussed some of those concerns in a recent piece, “Virginia Street downtown proposed to get makeover after study, community input.” In that article, the City’s Amy Pennington said, “What we found is that bike lanes being incorporated into Virginia Street is a viable and positive design regardless of wherever else they are in the downtown area.” I would certainly hope that even if bike lanes are installed on Virginia, they’d also be added to one or more nearby north-south thoroughfares since Virginia often closes for special events.
Bike lanes aside, Gehl proposed a number of initiatives to address what was the most striking figure from their earlier report—their assessment that Virginia Street’s primary problem is that people don’t feel that there’s enough to do there on a regular basis, largely because 70% of the street-level frontage is inactive—vacant lots, vacant properties, long blank walls, parking lots, etc.
To address that, Gehl is proposing some permanent initiatives like adding seating (of which there is essentially none right now), but also a lot of temporary interventions that would rely on a lot of ongoing programming and coordination, much of it seasonal. I do wish Gehl had conducted some pop-up activities to test out some of these ideas with us and see how they worked (I thought they had initially proposed doing that), but in general I think they’re on the right track when recommending adding more (any!) seating, trees, and shade to public areas; a food vendor and info kiosk on City Plaza (although I’d like to see an even more substantial overhaul there); programming in public areas; and pop-up shops or galleries in vacant storefronts.
I would personally have liked to have seen a little more of this place in their proposals. As someone who works constantly to enrich our experience of places by creating connections between the past and present, I see so much opportunity to capitalize on the dynamic stories, imagery, and historic architecture specific to Virginia Street. One of my recent social media posts for Reno Historical about how half of the Club Cal-Neva building started out in 1914 as the Palace Dry Goods Store (and later the swanky Club Fortune) was one of the site’s most popular Facebook posts ever, shared by the Cal-Neva, residents, and tourists alike. Reno’s spectacular history is one of its most valuable assets, and one of the most underutilized. It is what makes this place so special, and so much more can be done with it.
The one trial project that did get tested out on Virginia Street during the timeframe of the Placemaking Study was something that was not technically a part of it—the Micromobility Pilot Project organized by the City and RTC Washoe. So let’s talk about what we were told about that this past Thursday.
Results from the Micromobility Pilot Project
From the beginning, I was perplexed (as were others) about the relationship between the Placemaking Study and the Micromobility Pilot Project that was suddenly introduced on Virginia Street (and 5th Street) last spring (something I wrote about in “Disentangling Plans for Virginia Street.”)
Back then the City’s Kerrie Koski said that data from the project would be fed into the Placemaking Study to help “see what makes the most sense” for bike lanes downtown. But we got something of a different answer on Thursday, as it was stated that the intent of the Micromobility Pilot Project was not necessarily to test out how these features would work if implemented on Virginia Street itself, but that it was just a convenient place to test out a variety of features like buffered lanes, a two-way cycle track, a protected intersection, bike boxes, and bicycle signals, to help inform more permanent installations everywhere.
As it turns out, the study had a fairly limited scope and duration. UNR researchers subjected the Pilot Project areas to LiDAR analysis for three different periods of two days each, gathering information on the interactions between different types of traffic, volume of each mode of transportation, and frequency of “conflicts,” or fleeting moments of close proximity between those using various forms of transportation. And they collected public feedback through a survey. They did gather some helpful data including which kinds of features were more popular and safer than others, and you can view all the data on the City’s webpage.
The presenters said that this information can feed into the Virginia Street Placemaking Study (which they note includes recommendations on micromobility elements), but not precisely how. One street-specific conclusion they did draw is that the City shouldn’t eliminate one entire direction of vehicular traffic on Virginia Street again (as reported by This is Reno).
I have to say, since they were reconfiguring the lanes anyway, I do wish they had tested out the lane reconfiguration that The ROW already stated they wanted—and that Gehl is now recommending—to add bike lanes on either side of the vehicle lanes on Virginia and eliminate the center turn lane. Doing that might have provided some concrete data on how it would go over, if permanently implemented. At the end, we learned that these results will be presented to City Council and the RTC Board later this spring, when something called an “Active Transportation Plan” will be initiated. Exactly what that means, I don’t know. But you can watch a video of last week’s presentation and submit feedback on the findings here.
The Promise and Limitations of Public Action
Of course, plans are worthless unless they’re implemented. To that end, at their March 8 meeting, Reno City Council approved designating about $2.5 million of the remaining $28 million in ARPA funds toward the implementation of placemaking recommendations from Gehl plus a new match-based façade improvement program.
Precisely which placemaking recommendations would be funded is, of course, yet to be determined, and no further details were provided on the façade improvement program at this time. I’ll be very curious to learn whether these funds would be made available to every property owner regardless of their own private resources or if there will be some kind of parameters imposed to give funds to those who not only need financial assistance, but who will commit to some additional effort to further activate public space (rather than simply raise their own property values).
In the midst of these discussions last week came a sudden reminder of what is most needed if there’s any hope of permanently revitalizing Virginia Street. In a surprise announcement, Jessica Schneider revealed that the original location of Junkee in Midtown will be closing and that she’s moving the main Junkee store to the new Reno Public Market (the former Shopper’s Square) and also opening a new location (to be called Uncle Junkee) in the old Woolworth’s Building on North Virginia Street.
The announcement came on the heels of recent news about two ongoing developments along the section of Virginia Street covered by the Placemaking Study:
Reno City Center (in the old Harrah’s Reno complex) will apparently be building out those ground-floor eateries and bars by June.
Jimmy John’s and other eateries will soon be moving into a little commercial complex currently nearing completion on the corner of North Virginia and Maple Streets, just south of I-80.
All three announcements bode well for the coveted activation of downtown Virginia Street—on the north, south, and right in the middle—and together, they raise a very important point: that in many ways, the revitalization of Virginia Street is out of the public’s hands unless the City adopts policies that urge/pressure private landowners along the street to contribute more to the collective vision.
When you look closely at the 70% of inactive space that Gehl identified along the downtown stretch of Virginia Street—when you closely examine it—the vast majority is owned by private entities who are either deliberately keeping their property in its current state, or who expect it to be transformed into active uses in the near future.
Some of those lots are currently under construction, like University Crossing and the Reno City Center courtyard. Some lots are vacant because their owners deliberately (and in some cases, prematurely) demolished what was there to clear the way for new development. Those include the site of UNR’s planned College of Business Building north of I-80; the nearly block-sized parcel between 5th and 6th Streets owned by Compass Point Holdings; the two vacant lots on either side of the St. Francis Hotel at 340 and 380 N. Virginia Street (demolished by a development partner of Eldorado Resorts); and the Washoe County surface parking lot just south of the historic courthouse (the County has longstanding plans to build a new facility there). All those are being held vacant intentionally, even if in some cases we don’t know why.
Others are vacant storefronts, like the ground floor spaces in Canyon Flats (are they intended for commercial use?); the two storefronts in the Whitney Peak parking garage; and the historic Reno Savings Bank building at 2nd Street. Their reasons for vacancy may vary, but if we want to limit their duration, Gehl suggests implementing a vacancy fee that could be directed back to street improvements. And then there are the inactive spaces that have no pedestrian openings to the street, like the Circus Circus parking garage and most of the frontage of The ROW (anyone else envision a permanent Reno history display on this nice long empty wall?).
As for the public spaces along this corridor, I’ve written many times before that if the City made a concerted effort to implement year-round street-level activation at all of its downtown properties—the Locomotion and City Plazas, Reno Events Center, Ballroom, Bowling Stadium, Citicenter transit station site, and Southern Pacific Railroad Depot—they could singlehandedly transform the entire area. So in addition to whatever Gehl recommends, I think it’s important to have some robust community conversations about the City’s plans for all of those places and spaces—and soon.
Perhaps a little recent history can help us gain a bit more perspective on the promise and limitations of organized placemaking efforts: Back in 2007, two simultaneous projects were underway on Virginia Street, just blocks apart. First, the City of Reno was completing a highly-touted beautification project for the stretch of street between the Truckee River and Fourth Street. That project narrowed the street from four lanes to two lanes between the river and Second Street, widened the sidewalks to make them more “pedestrian-friendly,” and added old-fashioned lampposts, trees, hanging flower baskets, and rounded curbs. Business owners warned that widening the sidewalks wouldn’t bring more pedestrians and that narrowing the roadway would lead to more accidents, but Mayor Bob Cashell insisted, “I think this will make all the difference in the world for downtown.”
At the exact same time, a handful of independent merchants who had opened small shops and eateries along and around South Virginia Street decided to work together to create and promote a new district they named “Midtown.”
The trajectory of what has (and has not) occurred along those two stretches of Virginia Street in the intervening 15 years should provide some valuable lessons for us all. Midtown did not become a successful district because that stretch of Virginia Street had wide sidewalks or pretty streetlights or flower baskets—it did so despite the fact that the sidewalks were horrible (and sometimes impassable), the streetlights were aged, and the entire street was generally inhospitable to pedestrians. Just up the road, adding those millions of dollars in “improvements” downtown didn’t successfully transform the casino core into a place where more residents and tourists wanted to be; rather, it led us to where we are today, contemplating spending millions more dollars on a slew of efforts to draw pedestrians to the exact same place.
Likewise, Junkee and Recycled Records aren’t moving out of their Midtown locations because there are no bike lanes, trees, or seating outside their stores; they’re moving out because the financial arrangements with their landlords became untenable and/or they saw greener pastures elsewhere.
At the end of the day, the success of an urban district comes down to two things:
Property owners developing their land in a timely fashion, in ways that benefit not just themselves but others.
Landlords making it possible for viable, popular tenants to remain and thrive for the long term.
Ensure that private property owners ascribe to that social compact, and you’ll create places where businesses want to locate and where people will want to go. Please do take both the Placemaking and Micromobility surveys if you are so inclined, and as you do, think carefully about what might not just make these areas look better, but could deliver lasting, year-round benefits to both property owners and everyone else.
SB 12 to be heard on Monday, March 13
My latest Brief included a section called “Longstanding plans to create Ward 6 in jeopardy.” I encourage you to read it in full, but to summarize, the City of Reno decided in 2016 to create a new sixth ward and replace the At-Large Councilmember position with a Ward 6 Councilmember. That change to the City Charter was approved by the state legislature in 2017, with several years of lead time until the new Ward would be created. Doing so was still the plan throughout the City redistricting process that was just completed in 2021. This new bill—SB 12—would repeal that plan before it’s even implemented, retaining indefinitely the governmental composition of five wards plus one At-Large Councilmember.
The bill was scheduled for an initial hearing by the Senate Committee on Government Affairs on February 27, but was postponed due to weather. It has been rescheduled for this coming Monday, March 13 at 3:30pm. The information page is here and you can register to submit an opinion.
In this news this week
Last week, Jacobs Entertainment announced its rebrand of The Sands Regency to J Resort. In related news, Scenic Nevada issued an update about the Planning Commission’s approval of Jacobs’ request to allow the massive digital signs on the resort’s main building to advertise the Glow Plaza. No word on when Jacobs will start building the apartments at the corner of Arlington and West 2nd Street.
Lastly, a new Development Projects memo was issued last week, outlining several projects that will soon be on their way to meetings of the Neighborhood Advisory Boards, Planning Commission, and/or City Council. You can read it here. Also remember to check out the City Calendar for more upcoming meetings.
As always, you can view this and prior newsletters on my Substack site and follow the Brief (and contribute to the ongoing conversation) on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. If you feel inspired to contribute to my efforts, my Venmo account is @Dr-Alicia-Barber and you can mail checks, if you like, to Alicia Barber at P.O. Box 11955, Reno, NV 89510. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week.