Nevada In The National News

Nevada In The National News

Nevada in the National News Table of Contents

Date 6/15/2017 1/23/2016 12/1/2015

Publication The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal Innovation & Tech Today

11/17/2015

Entrepreneur

11/1/2015

San Francisco Examiner

Reno Renewed: Nevada's 'Biggest Little City' Is Changing Face

10/24/2015 10/23/2015

The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal

Reno Rolls Dice on Manufacturing Reno Sees Future, and It Isn't Casinos

8/12/2015

The Huffington Post

6/25/2015

Business Insider Australia

6/24/2015

Sacramento Magazine Online

6/21/2015

Bloomberg Business

4/26/2015

Las Vegas Review Journal

4/10/2015

Bloomberg Business

3/3/2015

San Jose Mercury News

2/1/2015 2/1/2015 12/9/2014

Bloomberg Business Popular Mechanics The Globe And Mail

12/5/2014

Entrepreneur

8/1/2014

Mountain Living

7/7/2014

The New York Times

Title State Brace for Flooding as Sierra'S Historic Snowpack Melts Barely Leaving Las Vegas Nevada's Two-City Tech Surge 5 Ways to Position Your City as the Next Startup Hotspot

5 Reasons Reno, Nevada Is Actually Pretty Cool Tesla's Gigafactory Could Change Everything in Reno, Nevada -- The 'Biggest Little City in the World' Reno Calling Reno Bets Tesla Gigafactory Will Erase Image as Downmarket Vegas Reno Revival Climbing Back Reno Wants To Be Silicon Valley's Back Office Reno Reborn: The Biggest Little City Goes Farm-To-Fork In Style Farming Fish In The Nevada Desert Startup Cities Reno's Road To Salvation Grow Your Business Without Drowning In Debt Rediscovering Reno In Casino Town, Rolling The Dice On High-Tech

Nevada in the National News Table of Contents

Date 7/1/2014 5/8/2014 10/20/2013 5/4/2012 10/1/2011 11/18/2010

Publication Sunset Magazine Entrepreneur The New York Times Fast Company Entrepreneur's Startups The Wall Street Journal

Title A Perfect Day In Reno 3 Alternative Tech Startup Cities With Less Traffic, More Housing A Neighborhood Drinks In Style Why You Should Swap Your Corporate Boardroom For A Company Kitchen Circle Of Trust: Five Rules For Building A Strong Network GM IPO Soaring, But GM As An Investment? Blech.

States Brace for Flooding as Sierra’s Historic Snowpack Melts California, Nevada cities prepare for inflows from melting snow after wettest winter

BISHOP, Calif.—The great melt off of the Sierra Nevada’s historic snowpack has begun, and that could spell trouble for communities in California and Nevada where reservoirs stand near capacity and rivers are swollen from one of the wettest winters on record.

The rising waters haven’t caused much flooding yet, although at least a dozen drowning deaths in rivers have been reported in recent weeks of people caught up in swift and cold currents. Water managers say they have left enough room in most reservoirs to handle the runoff.

With heavy snow in the southern Sierra this year, one of the biggest property risks from rapid snowmelt is to infrastructure the city of Los Angeles maintains as part of its extensive system of funneling mountain water 200 miles south from the Owens Valley.

It is among the biggest snowpacks on record mountain-wide, and the largest in certain places such as the southern Sierra Nevada which tower above the Owen Lake area.

State and local officials warn the worst could be to come, if mountains been buried under more than double their normal amount of snow get hit with much more precipitation in the coming weeks. The Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, for example, still has up to 20 feet of snow on the ground and has plans to stay open through August. Another foot of snow fell at high elevations above Lake Tahoe last weekend, in a rare June wintry storm.

“The real wild card is if we get hit with a big rain event,” said Frank Gehrke, chief snow surveyor for the California Department of Water Resources, as he monitored a rushing stream near this Eastern Sierra city in late May. “That could throw the whole system into tilt.”

Runoff problems also are of concern in Colorado and other mountain states which received heavy snow this winter. Canada already has faced severe runoff problems, after a heat wave earlier this spring resulted in major flooding in Quebec and British Columbia.

Rapid snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada has caused widespread damage in the past. In 1997, a deluge of rain from a succession of tropical storms in midwinter melted so much snow that rivers surged out of their banks—leaving nine people dead and an estimated $2 billion in damage in Northern and Central California.

In anticipation of the threat this year, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a disaster declaration in March to help expedite work to protect an estimated $1.1 billion in equipment for dust control on Owens Lake. That equipment includes pumps and pipelines to help keep down dust, as part of a court-ordered agreement to help mitigate Los Angeles’s diversion of waters flowing into the desert lake which resulted in it drying out a century ago.

Crews since then have been busy putting in sandbags, K-Rail barriers and taking other steps to keep equipment dry, while working upstream to reduce the amount of water in some streams.

On a sage-covered hill a few miles from the lake, Todd Bunn, a construction and maintenance supervisor for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, recently showed where one big creek had been split into several small ones by digging trenches for the water to spread into.

“We’ll manage this chaos by slowing down the water and spreading it out,” Mr. Bunn said.

Mr. Garcetti said he hopes the measures will be enough, but can’t know for sure yet.

“The melting has really only just begun so we don’t know yet,” said the mayor, who in early May toured the Owens Valley. “We can only do more than we have ever done before.”

Some places have already had close calls with disaster. In February, local officials in Churchill County, Nev., about 60 miles east of Reno noticed Lake Lahontan had risen to fill one fifth of its 295,000 acrefoot capacity in just five days—posing a flooding threat to the city of Fallon about six miles downstream.

“I woke up thinking, ‘My gosh, this is going to be catastrophic. We have to do something’,” said Churchill County Commissioner Pete Olsen, who helped initiate work on an emergency water diversion.

State and local crews along with the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District within days began clearing debris out of the Carson River, which empties out of the lake and runs through the town of 8,600 residents, and built a detour for the excess water.

A hastily built weir was installed to divert the water south of Fallon. There, crews assisted by a volunteer brigade of farmers using their tractors spent six weeks digging a 17-mile ditch to complete the water’s journey around populated areas. The completion on May 10 was celebrated with a ceremonial bucket of mud.

So much snowmelt water has poured into the river since then that officials believe they have averted flooding, but worry the threat to the community isn’t over.

“I feel comfortable if the water comes down at the same rate, but if we get a weather event all bets are off,” said Bill Lawry, former Fallon fire chief and the county’s incident commander for flood response.

Other flood-prone areas are taking protective measures. In this city of about 4,000 people, officials have staged bulldozers and other equipment to help clear debris jams at places along creeks that have flooded in the past. Sandbags are also being given out to residents, including 88-year-old Marvin Nelligan, who deployed about two dozen to help protect his home along fast-moving North Fork Bishop Creek.

“As you can see there’s a lot of water coming down,” Mr. Nelligan, a retired engineer, shouted above the torrent in late May. Bill Lutze, the sheriff of surrounding Inyo County, said the sound of rising waters in the creek behind his home above tiny Independence, Calif. recently woke him at 3 a.m. Some residents of a nearby subdivision became so concerned the same night they put up sandbags, he said.

“We’re at the whim of Mother Nature,” Mr. Lutze said. “Whatever she brings us we will have to deal with.”

5 Ways to Position Your City as the Next Startup Hotspot November 17, 2015

All entrepreneurs are on the hunt for the next Silicon Valley, and if they’re not hunting for it, they’re striving to manifest it in their own backyard.

Related: The 25 Best U.S. Cities for Tech Startups We’ve all heard, or least read about, U.S. cities promoting every imaginable selling point, from affordable housing ("C’mon, folks, nearly everywhere is cheaper to live than the Bay Area"), to tax incentives, local culture, thriving startup scenes and more. Basically, if you’re looking to launch an entrepreneurial venture in one of these “second-tier cities,” you'll find

support for your venture all over the Web. I personally live in a city that's offering a pile of goodies to entrepreneurs to relocate. My city, Reno, Nev., was recently highlighted on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, which detailed the city's vision for the future, diversification strategies and interest in attracting tech companies. While cities' and states' promotions efforts have been a subject of both praise and controversy, Reno has taken strides to convince entrepreneurs to seriously consider this metropolitan area of less than half a million people.

With a front-door view to the integral people and organizations who can roll out the red carpet to become Silicon Valley’s Back Office, here are five things Reno -- a faded gambling town that was down in the dumps less than six years ago -- has done to turn itself into a potential hotbed of entrepreneurial activity: 1. Encourage public officials to get involved.

Perhaps the most powerful component of Reno’s bid for business is the willingness of local and state representatives to greet and woo potential implants. Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve campaigned on a platform partly based on fostering the entrepreneurial environment. Senator Ben Kieckhefer actively fought payroll tax-increase proposals, and regularly lends support to entrepreneurial programs and organizations, such as the University of Nevada Reno Ozmen Center for Entrepreneurship.

There are few cities I've heard of where a new-to-town prospective entrepreneur can find himself or herself in the mayor’s office as a result of having made four or five connections. Paving that golden road is something the city has done well and offers a warm welcome and opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet the right people with little difficulty.

2. Offer a wealth of resources.

As noted, the region's willingness to personally guide newbies to resources like hiring pools, legal advice and funding outlets and more is important for luring new business to a city. Reno is awash with organizations and active community members ready and willing to help. In this vein, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDWAN) developed the Reno Startup Deck, a deck of cards

with a twist: Each card features either a local resource’s photo, name and company, with a list of its services, or a specific organization/entity whose services are essential to any aspiring business owner.

For its card game, EDAWN selected pillars of the community dedicated to fostering the needs of potential recruits, and, as is essential for any game, established a set of rules to ensure authenticity and a code of conduct.

Money is important, too. Venture funds include the Battle Born Venture, which backs early-stage, Nevada-based enterprises, and the Silver State Opportunities Fund; both keep sustainable funding opportunities ever-present in the region. In addition, private backers such as Newbean Capital, Sierra Angels, Holland & Hart and more are popping up, providing multiple avenues of funding for startups throughout the city. And of course, Reno is only a short flight or drive to the Valley goldmine.

Related: 3 Alternative Tech Startup Cities With Less Traffic, More Housing (Infographic) 3. Ensure proactive university support and investment.

A mid-sized city can only be so attractive to potential startup migrants unless it can offer the labor to support the ecosystem. Reno wasn’t a hotbed for technically trained and higher-educated employees; in fact, the city has long been known for graduation rates on the lower end of the scale and a lack of programs to support an innovative workforce. That’s all changing, and doing wonders for the positioning of the city.

The Ozmen Center for Entrepreneurship supports UNR programs that develop entrepreneurial capacities and foster the creation of new business ventures, and was an integral part of the InNEVation campus extension. It continues to work closely with EDAWN, expanding and adjusting curriculum, programs and resources on campus to train students in specific skills and technological languages in high demand for startups and those technology companies that might relocate to Reno.

The University has also made strides to foster drone development, wooing nearly ten manufacturers to the area, to date, including the world's first autonomous aerial delivery company, Flirtey. And these companies are bringing jobs -- an estimated 400 to the area -- while UNR is working hard to pump out

educated and well-trained professionals to meet the demand, a key aspect that can make or break an entrepreneur's decision to set up shop in Reno.

4. Develop a thriving creative community.

Entrepreneurs are no longer high-society socialites, hobnobbing around private clubs and executive lounges. The new era's founders and execs want to live and work in a place bustling with creativity and inspiration to feed their active minds. A city that cannot offer a population of artists and visionaries isn’t going to be appealing nor will it foster the “maker” workforce tech leaders need.

Thanks in large part to Burning Man, and the artistic endeavors it helps fund and support throughout the year, members of Reno’s creative class have many opportunities to exercise their passions and enjoy community support. Downtown plays host to a co-working space for photographers and videographers and several artist co-ops, includingone backed by Paul Buchheit, the inventor of Gmail, and an all-ages arts and music organization. It's this arts community that creates perhaps the most unique draw for relocators.

5. Keep the public in an 'organic state of mind.'

Perhaps the most essential component to the creation of a startup community is a culture that entrepreneurs and their employees want to be a part of. That's not something marketing gimmicks or massive incentives can build. Instead, it requires a collective drive to do more than just make a profit, and just play the game.

Cities have to cultivate a climate for livability that people will talk about. In Reno, on the edge of downtown’s riverwalk and white water kayaking park, is a collaborative workspace designed to support an urban workforce of entrepreneurs and creatives. This space serves as the centerpoint for "Startup Row," collectively established by an early group of entrepreneurial settlers in downtown.

Districts of culturally diverse and locally owned restaurants, bars, speciality stores and community centers are thriving. Ongoing movements, such as Burning Man-led art initiatives, make up cultural

initiatives attractive to serial entrepreneurs looking for a collaborative, non-aggressive environment in which to live and work.

In any city hoping to attract entrepreneurship, residents and evangelists have to band together to offer the best of all worlds, then tout that to outsiders. Bringing together artists, policymakers, influencers and professionals to drink the Koolaid and build an appealing community built from passion and desire for a new future is what fuels hope that Reno or any city can draw in new entrepreneurs for years to come.

Reno Renewed: Nevada’s ‘Biggest Little City’ Is Changing Face November 1, 2015

Once known more as Nevada’s grittier gambling getaway, Reno’s emerging food and drink scene shows a bit of a renaissance has been afoot in the high desert.

If renaissance is too dramatic, that Reno is changing is inarguable. The edges are still rough — happily so, in ways — but in recent years the northern Nevada city just outside Tahoe has attracted high-profile tech companies like Tesla, Apple, Amazon and Switch to its dusty shores, and sprouted boutique hotels, trendy restaurants and hipster bars. Younger families are beginning to come here for not only a cheaper cost of living (for now, anyway) but for the lifestyle.

“It’s sort of like a roughneck Brooklyn,” says Art Farley, owner of the highly regarded Brasserie St. James in Reno’s midtown area, where some of those coarse edges are turning into fertile ground for foodie experimentation.

A former ice house, the brasserie opened in 2012 and specializes in craft beers, from English-style bitter, saison, lambic and Belgian-style tripel to a barrel-aged sour beer made with roasted butternut squash and white sage. Freshly baked soft pretzels, salad with fennel and apricot, mussels in Thai curry, braised short ribs and oxtail with polenta also adorn the menu. Having already taken “best midsized brewpub” in the country at last year’s Great American Beer Festival, Farley is planning to open a sister site in San Francisco’s Mission District later this year.

Reno’s biggest hotel casino rises up like a monolith from a mostly vacant section of Reno just east of downtown. The 2,000-room Grand Sierra Resort, originally an MGM casino, was bought in 2011 by an Orange County-based group as a distressed property for $42 million. Former president and COO Steve Wolstenholme, who believes it is now (with an additional $100 million already invested) worth $1.1 billion, sees the development as part of a larger effort to promote Reno as business-friendly as well as tourist-friendly.

“Casinos are an important part of our legacy, but they’re an amenity now,” Wolstenholme says over coffee at one of the resort’s several restaurants. “Reno’s about a lot more.”

Indeed the hotel casino itself — as many have — is distancing itself from its seamier roots, with an eye toward families and other friendly visitors with incomes to dispose of. Despite the blackjack tables, poker rooms and fleets of slots still glittering center stage in the main lobby, Wolstenholme — who has since moved on to work for another casino project in Asia — was eager to tout an emphasis on hospitality, shopping and live entertainment.

“If we believe as an industry that a slot machine is our future, we’re killing ourselves,” he says.

Back downtown, business owners are trying to revive a forlorn section of Fourth Street near the bus station (also a homeless outpost) and an assortment of old bars, shops and strip clubs. A couple of brighter spots include Louis’, a restaurant and bar offering Basque specialties and the famous Picon Punch, and The Depot, a three-story brick building built in 1910 as a train depot and now a restaurant, craft brewery and distillery serving up plates of charcuterie, kale, quinoa, burgers and pork belly.

In the shadow of Reno’s iconic “Biggest Little City In The World” archway on Virginia Street, alongside a smattering of panhandlers and street musicians, Heritage restaurant at the new Whitney Peak Hotel is promoting locally sourced fine dining. The dishes feature creative combinations — Chinese broccoli with black garlic and sesame, turnips and harissa, and beef heart with a Peruvian aji amarillo sauce — while preserving the essential character and taste of the ingredients. Heritage got a boost from local celebrity chef Mark Estee, a consultant on its menu. Estee’s Italian-centric Campo — one of a handful of his restaurants in Reno — overlooks the city’s reinvigorated riverwalk along the Truckee River a few blocks

away. The river’s water, which flows down from the Sierras, may be much lower than locals like these days, but their food scene has arguably never been loftier.

Likewise there are now a bunch of higher-end drinking options to complement the older neighborhood bars. Midtown’s Chapel Tavern, 1864 Tavern and Death and Taxes are among them.

“We’re the thirstiest market in the United States,” brags the friendly and knowledgeable Michael Moberly from behind the bar at Death and Taxes, which opened in 2013. Its stylishly black-walled interior is stocked with hundreds of rare bottles of whiskey, bourbon, tequila and mezcal. Moberly, who was the bar’s “spirits educator” — leading classes and tastings as the only, apparently, full-time professional dispenser of imbibing wisdom in northern Nevada — before recently taking a similar role with a local wine purveyor, adds that Renoites have also become more discriminating in their drink tastes.

“That’s what I look for in spirits…Is it interesting? Is it compelling? Does it make me want to continue to drink it?” Moberly says as he pours a splash of El Jolgorio — smoky, medicinal and sweet, and one of about 50 types of mezcal the bar carries — into a traditional dried gourd vessel. The “tribal, rustic” qualities of mezcal make it a local favorite.

The craft distillery trend has expanded in the Reno area as well. In fact, more have set up shop there than in any other part of Nevada. In addition to the Depot, Seven Troughs Distilling Company in neighboring Sparks offers up several well-made spirits: a surprisingly sippable “recession-proof moonshine” made from corn and barley, as well as rum and vodka. The distillery, which began in 2010 and was northern Nevada’s first (since the 1880s anyhow), runs out of a small warehouse with a pot still sitting atop a brick oven and vats of sweetly fermenting corn. With a nod to history, the distillery is trying to recreate the feel of 19th-century spirits and is using local grains to create them, according to distiller Tom Adams.

Verdi Local Distillery, located on a country road close to the California border, opened this year and is an even more modest operation. Its owners are actually seeking certification with the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest craft distillery in the world.

“We started in the kitchen, and then just expanded into the garage,” says Jeremy Baumann with a smile.

Baumann, who runs the distillery with his wife Katey, has whiskeys flavored with lemon, apple and cinnamon, and mahogany, while vats and barrels in the back take the science experiment even further with sage, pine, banana, habañero, dandelion wine, beer, garlic and black licorice all being distilled into not-yet-for-sale-and-possibly-never whiskeys.

With its big-city aspirations, Reno still retains a pleasantly small-town feel. That brightly lit downtown arch saying may be truer than ever.

Ari Burack is a freelance writer who also blogs at http://openskylight.blogspot.com.

RENO RENEWED: Grand Sierra Resort and Casino: The 2,000-room hotel has several restaurants and bars, as well as a spa, conference center, bowling alley, nightclub, shopping and live concerts. An inexpensive option with clean, modern rooms from which to explore the rest of Reno and surrounding area. Rooms from $58. 2500 E. Second St., Reno. www.grandsierraresort.com Death and Taxes: This bar is as serious about spirits as the name indicates, with an expansive collection of rare and unusual bottles to enjoy as is or in cocktails created by your bartender/spirits educator. 26 Cheney St., Reno. www.deathandtaxesreno.com Brasserie St. James: The award-winning Midtown brewery has a wide selection of superb house-made beers to sip alongside upscale bar fare. 901 S. Center St., Reno.www.brasseriesaintjames.com Heritage at Whitney Peak Hotel: One of downtown Reno’s newest restaurants opened in 2014 with a focus on simple gustatory creations using fresh ingredients sourced from local farmers. 255 N. Virginia St., Reno. www.heritagewph.com The Depot: This popular, multi-level brewery/distillery/eatery runs out of downtown Reno’s historic former train depot. 325 E. Fourth St., Reno. www.thedepotreno.com

Virginia City: A nearby detour into the hills about 20 miles south of Reno will land you in the historic center of the Nevada silver boom, unsure if the costumed locals are an elaborate cosplay of sheriffs and outlaws, or simply haven’t changed their garb in the last 150 years. Stop in at the Bucket of Blood bar for an appropriately spicy Bloody Mary and live music, while a local hobo parades his donkey down the street outside. Other colorful characters lead underground tours of a local mine — the entrance is at the back of another local bar. Ghost stories and other oddities abound in this small hill town.

Reno Sees Future, and It Isn’t Casinos Unlike Las Vegas, city embraces manufacturing as economic driver October 23, 2015

RENO, Nev.—For much of the past half century, Reno moved in lock step with its glamorous big sister, Las Vegas, their fortunes rising and falling with their mainstay industry, gambling.

But Reno is now betting on a different economic future, turning its back on casino tourism as an economic driver in favor of becoming a manufacturing hub for everything from drones to car batteries.

Since 2011, the “Biggest Little City in the World” has recruited about 100 companies to locate or expand here with more than 10,000 new jobs—many cajoled by a former West Point cadet who instilled military discipline into Reno’s economic-development office.

He had a hand from a cowboy-hat-clad brothel owner turned civic booster, who was a pivotal player in persuading electric-car makerTesla Motors Inc. to build its coveted $5 billion “Gigafactory” here.

Reno landed the Tesla deal in no small part because of a $1.3 billion tax-break package signed by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. Critics saw the tax break, the state’s largest ever and among the biggest such enticements nationally, as a giveaway of public funds.

Some residents of cross-state rival Las Vegas, a metropolitan region that is home to roughly three-fourths of the state’s 2.8 million residents, seethed at what they saw as Mr. Sandoval, a Republican from Reno, favoring his hometown.

But they loved it in Reno, a metro area of about a half million people.

“We’re like the cool kids,” says Mayor Hillary Schieve, who was congratulated on the Tesla deal by other elected officials at June’s U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco.

Many cities across the U.S. are trying to do the same thing as Reno: diversify away from once-bedrock industries that have cratered or become too volatile. Houston, for example, has tried to branch out from energy production into technology and health care. For many Rust Belt cities, the makeover process has been a struggle, in part because they started too late, says Gary A. Hoover, chairman of the economics department at the University of Oklahoma.

“If they’re smart, cities will diversify,” Dr. Hoover says. “Even if they are still successful, they need to be flexible and think about what the emerging markets will be in the future.”

In Nevada, taxes and fees on hotel casinos accounted for nearly $1.4 billion or 45% of the $3 billion in state general-fund revenue in fiscal 2014—more than for any other industry, according to the Nevada Resort Association.

But a gambling and tourism economy has proved a dangerous proposition during hard times: Nevada’s jobless rate hit nearly 14% in 2009—the highest in the country.

Nevada has counted on Las Vegas to help lead it back after past recessions. This time, many state officials hope a more diversified Reno will provide Nevada a cushion.

“What’s happening in Reno is certainly good for the entire state,” says Steve Hill, director of the governor’s office of economic development.

There are signs Reno’s strategy is starting to pay off. Before Nevada’s top two metro areas went into recession in 2008, both had unemployment rates below 4%. While the jobless rate in both soared to 14% in 2011, Reno’s has fallen to 6.1%, as of August, vs. 7% for Las Vegas, according to Labor Department estimates.

One reason is that Reno— just outside of California along the major cross-country corridor of Interstate 80—has experienced 14.7% growth in manufacturing employment over the past five years, compared with just 4.8% for Las Vegas, according to state data.

Reno’s renaissance isn’t assured. The city has to demonstrate it can meet the demand for the new jobs, many of which require technical skills.

Owen Tripp, chief executive of Grand Rounds Inc., a San Franciscobased Internet medical startup that expanded here earlier this year, says his firm is now relying heavily on graduates from the University of Nevada, Reno to ramp up to 200 employees over the next two years, from 50.

Reno also is bound to feel the strain of new demands for government services such as public education and housing.

With thousands more jobs in the pipeline—Tesla alone estimates it will hire 6,500 by 2020—local officials worry construction won’t catch up with the demand. The median price for an existing single-family home nearly doubled to $283,200 in the second quarter from a postrecession low of $147,800 in 2012, but still below the 2005 peak of $365,500.

“I’m worried housing prices are going to go too high,” says Reno’s mayor, Ms. Schieve.

Tax breaks Critics of the Tesla deal say the state gave away too much in tax incentives, making it harder to fund infrastructure needs. And Tesla is obligated to hire only half the employees for its lithium-ion-battery plant from Nevada; the rest can come from California, saysGreg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a watchdog group in Washington.

Mr. Sandoval said he had no choice but to offer substantial tax breaks because other states offered incentives too. “Would I prefer not to have to offer abatements and such? Of course,” said Mr. Sandoval, who has made diversifying Nevada’s economy his priority. “You can not offer anything and have nobody come. That’s your alternative.”

Las Vegas, too, has diversified within its linchpin visitor industry, with casinos offering more nongambling options. Since 1990, gambling’s share of total resort revenue on the Las Vegas Strip has declined to 37%, from 58%, according to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

But Las Vegas isn’t getting the same level of tax incentives from state government as Reno for attracting new businesses, ruffling feathers among state and local leaders in Nevada’s Clark County, which includes the city.

“We’re patiently waiting in Las Vegas to see what kinds of deals might be struck that actually benefit our residents,” says Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak.

Mr. Hill from the Nevada’s governor’s office says the difference in incentives looks less pronounced when the Tesla deal, an outlier, is removed from the equation.

Even so, Nevada over the past year has awarded $359.6 million in incentives, including tax abatement, to companies in the Reno area, compared with $284.7 million in the Las Vegas area, according to a July report by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

Nevada has been a gambling haven since its early mining days in the 19th century, and Reno was its capital of excess well before Las Vegas got its first gambling license in the 1930s. But the fortunes of the two cities changed forever in the 1940s when mobster Bugsy Siegel built his famed Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, making it the flashier den of sin.

Reno continued to beckon residents across the state line in California, but it lived in the shadow of Las Vegas, which became an international attraction. Reno got tagged with a darker image when Johnny Cash sang, in “Folsom Prison Blues”: “But I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.”

“The perception has been gaming, Johnny Cash and debauchery,” says Brian Bonnenfant, project manager for the Center for Regional Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Not a sure bet Reno shifted away from gambling in part because it was becoming less of a sure bet. The growth of Reno’s casino industry closely tracked Las Vegas’s through 2000, but the legalization of Indian gambling in California cut deeply into Reno’s business.

Gambling revenue in Washoe County, which includes Reno, fell by a third to $752.4 million in 2014 from $1.1 billion in 2000, while on the Las Vegas Strip it jumped by a third to $6.4 billion, according to UNLV data.

Reno started to diversify about 15 years ago by marketing itself as a distribution center, touting its abundance of land and proximity to California and other Western states. But the benefits were limited.

Then the recession hit, tanking another economic driver: construction, which had been fueled by the Southwestern housing bubble. Reno’s construction employment dove by 18,100 jobs, or 71%, between 2006 and 2011.

In 2011, local boosters decided to seek outside help. The Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada recruited Mike Kazmierski, a retired Army colonel, as president and CEO. Arriving in Reno, Mr. Kazmierski, once the top economic-development official in Colorado Springs, saw one of the first things he wanted to change: advertisements atop taxicabs for gentlemen clubs.

“We wanted to show we’re not Las Vegas,” he says.

5 Reasons Reno, Nevada Is Actually Pretty Cool August 12, 2015

photo by Davidlohr Bueso via Flickr Let's face it, Reno Nevada rarely ranks, or even registers a blip, on most travelers' radars. Indeed, parts of the city still do seem the sort of place where someone might shoot a man, just to watch him die. The cultural climate also remains mostly conservative, but with a libertarian (and practical) bent that allows for gambling in the garish, smoky mega casinos and salaciousness in the shadows (if not in the city limits, within a few miles).

Down on the streets, however, a new Reno has been percolating for years and is finally beginning to show some life, especially in the long blighted downtown. The youthful energetic businesses are bringing parts of the city a new vibrancy, and in some cases, even a sense of cool. Here are five reasons why adding a stop in Reno on your next trip west is worth your time.

photo by Andrew via Flickr It's greener than you might think It's true much of Nevada is a desert, but apparently there's a difference between the desert of Las Vegas and high desert of Reno. However, the nuance clearly matters a lot to the trees and grasses, which fill city parks and surrounding hills. At places along the Truckee River, which threads the city, it's sometimes hard to distinguish it from a lush New England landscape. Head west and the greenery intensifies quickly as you pass into Tahoe National Forest.

photo by Didriks via Flickr It serves excellent beer and cocktails Soaked with booze from the city's founding as a station for miners seeking riches, Reno pours its drinks liberally, but nowadays ever more artisanally, as very adroitly demonstrated in the Gothic Victorian gentleman's club, Death and Taxes. Craft brewers have also arrived and begun adding new character to the city's taps. Under the Rose, a makeshift-like bar in an old warehouse on the formerly derelict East 4th Street pours some of the best beer in town and makes it all the more fun with a homespun games room, complete with ping pong, foosball, and even bocce. For a more polished experience, walk about 10 minutes up the road to Depot, a renovated 100-year-old train depot now serving its own line of beers and liquors.

photo by 401kcalculator.org It's cheap as hell Of course, living in New York City makes just about everywhere look remarkably cheap, but Reno seems particularly so, with suites at casino-resorts like the Peppermill starting at less than $200 a night, even in peak season. In fact, a mid-range meal for two at Reno's restaurants costs less than half what it would cost in New York and so do the drinks. Even the JetBlue flight from New York is less than $300. So feel free to loosen up the wallet. It doesn't take much to go far.

photo by Don Graham via Flickr

It's really close to Lake Tahoe California may claim the largest share of the majestic Lake Tahoe and its surrounding Alpine landscape, but Nevada has the choicest slice, thanks mostly to eccentric millionaire George Whittell Jr., who gobbled up 40,000 acres and more than 20 miles of shoreline on the Nevada side and built the equally eccentric Thunderbird Lodge to live in, along his lion and mistresses. When he died in 1969, the land was bequeathed to the U.S. Forest Service, who continues its protection. And it's all just an hour's drive from Reno.

photo by Jamie Kingham, with permission It has fabulous art Only 5% of museums in the United States are accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, and one of them is the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. The building is itself a work of art, designed by Will Bruder to echo the unique geology of the Black Rock Desert, 140 miles north of Reno. Inside it gets even better, with a permanent collection divided into four themed areas--Altered Landscape Photography, Art of the Greater West, Contemporary Art, and the Work Ethic--and regularly changing exhibitions of artists like John James Audubon, Phyllis Shafer, and Frida Kahlo. An impressive range of art classes makes it easy to join in. Just a few blocks away, the National Automobile Museum shows off more than 200 vintage cars, including some owned by Elvis, Sinatra, and John Wayne.

Tesla's Gigafactory could change everything in Reno, Nevada -- the 'biggest little city in the world' June 25, 2015

Construction of the Tesla Gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada is shown February 18, 2015.

Construction of Tesla’s $US5 billion Gigafactory is in full swing.

Although the massive battery factory is not even close to opening its doors, the effect on Reno’s economy and public image can already be felt.

“Tesla Motors Inc.’s $US5 billion ‘gigafactory’ may be the best thing to happen to northern Nevada since the silver rush of the 1850s and the gaming boom a century later,” Bloomberg’s Dana Hull wrote.

Hull added that the Gigafactory provides a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to diversify the economy and transcend Reno’s image as a downmarket Las Vegas.”

According to local officials, the factory — will be tasked with supplying Tesla’s growing stable of models with lithium-ion batteries — has generated interest from a slew of investors for Reno.

Companies such as Apple and Amazon have both recently opened facilities in Reno, Bloomberg reports.

In addition, Tesla’s partner in the factory, Panasonic, is investing heaving into the factory. According to Automotive News, Panasonic should cover 30-40% of the Gigafactory’s $US5 billion pricetag.

One industry observer told Bloomberg that Tesla could do for Reno what BMW did for Spartanburg.

In the 1990, BMW established its new North American production facility in the South Carolina town. In the decades since, the region has becomes a hub for automotive development and production.

In total, the Nevada state government expects the Gigafactory to create as many as 9,000 jobs for the region.

Reno Calling June 24, 2015 Think Reno, and up come vision of flashing neon and phantom sounds of slot machines and blasting music. That's all here, but there's more.

We see the billboards all around Sacramento for Reno’s casinos—big winnings, bargain buffets, glitzy shows, and those deep discounts on room rates. Take a two-hour drive east on Interstate 80 through the foothills, cross the soaring and rugged Sierra, buzz through the high desert, and you’ll roll into Reno.

The city, just over the California-Nevada border, draws visitors for gaming, its RiverWalk District, a burgeoning restaurant scene and some almost surreal and beautiful scenery on its outskirts. It’s a city that combines railroad history with desert dust, high hopes with neon, all in the shadow of the great Sierra Nevada.

How you do Reno depends on why you’re there. Gambling and nightlife? No question: Stay downtown, guzzle the drinks, yank levers and belly up to the tables. Dance under the disco ball and take a room at one of the biggies— Harrah’ Nugget, the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, Circus Circus. Room rates are dirt cheap—yes, you can get a basic one for $29 a night—just be sure to ask for nonsmoking. Remember, this is Nevada. The rules are different here. Grand Sierra, the Peppermill, luxurious and still a steal, are a little farther afield. The Peppermill, huge and lavish, pours on the plush with two pools, a spa and fitness room, and restaurants and bars galore. Check out the saltwater aquarium in the Oceano Bar or sit flameside in the Fireside Lounge, reminiscent of the Peppermill bar that used to be on Arden Way. The

Atlantis attaches to the Reno-Sparks Convention Center by a skybridge and, like the Peppermill, this resort is decked out with it all: numerous restaurants, nightclubs, pools, spa, weight room and of course the massive casino.

Let’s say you want to gamble a little, but maintain a nearby escape, too. Whitney Peak Hotel, which replaced the old Fitzgerald’s casino (bringing with it a complete hosing down, airing out and a full remodel) right beside the Biggest Little City in the World arch, is an oasis in downtown Reno.

Nonsmoking, nongaming. So when you walk in, there’s no clang-clang, ding-ding-ding-ding of slot machines, no dizzying carpet pattern, no nicotine cloud. Reserve a room with concierge privileges for happy hour treats, full breakfast and all-day soft drinks. While you’re at Whitney Peak, scramble around BaseCamp, the climbing facility that occupies the property’s second floor. Indoor rock walls of varying steepness and pitch will challenge the fittest participant, and the outdoor climbing wall goes higher than any other in the world—164 feet. Walk a slackline, dip and drop on the gymnastic rings, or work out in the adjacent gym. Dine in at restaurant, one of Reno’s farm-to-fork dining establishments, founded by Mark Estee of Campo (a Reno riverfront hotspot) fame and the guy at the helm of Reno’s upmarket food scene. Order the Big Ass Pork Chop.

To see the cool side of Reno, head for the river—the Truckee, to be exact, which cuts through the city and draws locals to wade (we’re not sure they’re supposed to do this here, but they do), walk their dogs, rock out when a festival’s set up on the banks, and—most of all—eat. Campo, parked riverfront, is another of Estee’s endeavors, and a popular one. The menu is packed with fun: Crispy Pig Parts, Bee Sting pizza, Prosciutto Pillows, plus all the main entrees that change daily depending on what’s in season, at the market, in mind. The Chef’s Tasting is the best way to go, if it’s available. For 50 bucks a person, live a little and let the kitchen decide your dinner. Across the water, the Wild River Grille serves steak-and-seafood fare—and some mean cocktails made with house-infused liquors—on its lively Riverside brick patio. Every Monday, bring your dog, and a portion of your check goes to the local Shakespeare Animal Fund. Not right on the river but nearby, Blue Moon Pizza runs the biggest menu of pizzas we’ve ever seen, in every size. Every individual at your table can order their personal best, either from a list of house favorites or build-your-own. Dress down—it gets hot in there by that wood-fired oven.

Back to Mark Estee for a moment: In addition to Campo and Heritage, he’s behind several other Reno eateries, including (which has locations in Reno and Truckee, plus a food truck, and sources its ingredients from local farms and ranches) and Reno Provisions, a food hall with a market that carries housemade pastas, local meats and produce, and specialty items such as white anchovies, Italian cheeses and fancy olives; a bakery onsite produces breads and pastries. Reno Provisions also has a cafeteria (have a Power Greens salad and a bowl of New England Clam Chowda) and a bar with a decent-length cocktail list and a BOGO policy for bloody marys and mimosas on Saturday and Sunday.

For the history lover, several museums beckon. The Nevada Museum of Art, with some 2,000 works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, assembles its collections in themes relating to land use and the changing Nevada landscape. Hurry to catch the butterfly exhibit, Erika Harrsch’s “The Monarch Paradigm: Migration as Metaphor,” which ends July 26. Spend a long morning in the galleries, then grab lunch at Chez Louie, another of Estee’s restaurants, this one French-inspired (try the Croque Monsieur).

At the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum, kids will have a ball climbing clouds (and learning about water and weather) and playing in an 80-foot-long replica of the Truckee River. Another soon-toopen gallery promises to engage the human in all of us: Inside Out: An Anatomy Experience. A place for the auto buff, the 100,000-square-foot National Automobile Museum fits Burma Shave signs and old gas pumps in among classic cars that include a gold DeLorean, Elvis Presley’s Cadillac and a copper Rolls Royce.

You won’t find a lot of natural beauty in downtown Reno, where the neon signs glow and flash at night and the sidewalks the next morning often hang over with remnants of the hard-party experience. The morning after is a great time to head for Reno’s gems. The University of Nevada, Reno campus on the outskirts of town provides a grassy shady walk among pretty brick buildings and bookworms, and the Fleischmann Planetarium & Science Center puts on some impressive full-dome shows. Not far from campus, Rancho San Rafael Park makes for a peaceful outing. The Wilbur Day Museum & Arboretum puts native foliage on display. The museum’s indoor garden of ponds and waterfalls moistens desertparched skin, and the labyrinth of trails and bridges that winds down the hillside in the arboretum provides shady respite on a hot summer day. Let the kids play on the dinosaur climbing equipment in the park.

Rancho San Rafael Park also hosts the Great Reno Balloon Race, a gorgeous display of hot air balloons beneath the open sky. Free to spectators and held the weekend after Labor Day weekend (Sept. 11–13), the event brings some 100 balloons to soar. Some highlights: the 5 a.m. Glow Show, stunning against the predawn sky, and Dawn Patrol, when some 20 balloons qualified to fly in the dark take to the air. (renoballoon.com) Another famous Reno event, Hot August Nights, takes place throughout Reno, Sparks and other Washoe County towns Aug. 4–9. Classic cars, drag races, cruises, huge prizes and lots and lots of old-days musical entertainment mark this event. (hotaugustnights.net) Finally, anyone who bowls must check out Reno’s National Bowling Stadium. This is not just any old bowling alley. A four-story lobby (complete with whimsical bronze sculpture of bowling family) greets visitors, and the tournament floor houses 78 lanes, a 440-foot video screen for scores and graphics, and a massive pro shop. Sports enthusiasts also will want to make the few-mile drive to Sparks to check out Scheels, the giantest sporting goods store this side of Cabela’s. Ogle at the aquariums arching the entryways, take a ride on the in-store Ferris wheel, and pose with plenty of weirdly lifelike taxidermy.

Try your hand at the shooting range and enjoy a buffalo burger for lunch. The selection of sporting goods is staggering—every sport is represented, from cycling to hunting, running to rafting. Need anything in camo? It’s on the second floor, a massive selection of splotchy green and brown.

Reno Bets Tesla Gigafactory Will Erase Image as Downmarket Vegas June 21, 2015

Elon Musk’s sprawling factory outside Reno, Nevada, won’t start making batteries until next year, and local residents are already talking up the “Tesla effect.”

The farm-to-table Campo restaurant in the city’s trendy Riverwalk District is offering a 10 percent discount to employees at Tesla, where Musk is chief executive officer. This month, the Siena Hotel and Casino is promoting the “Tesla Triple Spin Wheel” and giving away Model S sedans.

Tesla employees have begun relocating from the San Francisco Bay Area, buying houses in leafy neighborhoods and enrolling their kids in local schools. The new Whitney Peak Hotel, a non-smoking,

non-gambling luxury inn, has become the unofficial headquarters for visiting Tesla workers. JetBlue Airways began offering the first direct flights from New York last month and says the route is already well-subscribed.

Tesla Motors Inc.’s $5 billion “gigafactory” may be the best thing to happen to northern Nevada since the silver rush of the 1850s and the gaming boom a century later. The company’s decision to build the 10 million-square-feet facility in an industrial park east of town is giving the self-proclaimed “Biggest Little City in the World” a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to diversify the economy and transcend Reno’s image as a downmarket Las Vegas.

“We’re getting incredible national and international recognition as the place that Tesla picked,” says Mike Kazmierski, president and CEO of EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada. “Everyone is asking, ‘What the heck is happening in Reno?’”

Burning Man Founded in 1868 as a stop on the transcontinental railroad, Reno is located in a valley 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The city of about 235,000 is struggling to shed an image as a second-tier destination for gamblers and visitors to Lake Tahoe. Reno is clawing its way back from the recession -- embracing the annual Burning Man festival, welcoming the creative class and building a Start-Up Row downtown.

The city has lured several large technology companies. Apple Inc. is building a data center. Amazon.com Inc. moved a distribution warehouse from rural Fernley, Nevada, to a 1.2-million-square-foot warehouse closer to Reno. Switch, the Las Vegas-based developer of data centers, is building a facility near Reno and helping to fund the University of Nevada at Reno’s new innovation center downtown.

The hope is that Tesla’s gigafactory will attract other manufacturers, employers that typically stick around for the long haul unlike technology firms that are more likely to close data or customer-service centers when their business model changes.Exhibit A: International Business Machines Inc., which recently fired half its workers in Dubuque about five years after opening a customer-service center in the Iowa city.

John Boyd, who helps companies scout locations for new facilities, says Tesla could transform Reno much the way BMW did Spartanburg, South Carolina, when the automaker opened a plant there in the 1990s. Boyd says suppliers will flock to be close to Tesla as they have in Fremont, California, where the company builds its electric cars. Panasonic Corp., a supplier and major investor in the gigafactory, plans to send hundreds of workers from Japan.

“We couldn’t be more excited about Tesla’s future in Reno,” says Khobi Brooklyn, a company spokeswoman.

There’s one area of concern: Local colleges don’t graduate enough students with the technical skills to fill the gigafactory’s expected 6,500 permanent positions. Tesla is investing $37.5 million in Nevada’s K12 education system and the state is pursuing reforms. But there’s very little for higher education apart from the company’s $1 million for battery research at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. A 2014 Brookings report urged the state to boost the number of Nevadans who possess at least some postsecondary training in “STEM” -- science, technology, engineering and math.

This fall the engineering school at University of Nevada at Reno will start offering a minor in Batteries and Energy Storage Technologies. JB Straubel, Tesla’s chief technology officer, will speak at the UNR College of Engineering in October. University President Marc Johnson dismisses skeptics who say Tesla will struggle to find enough skilled workers. “Reno will be ready,” he says.

Tim Den Hartog, 47, is among more than 400 people on a waiting list to take a production technician class at Reno’s Truckee Meadows Community College. He’s relocating from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with his wife and two kids.

“I just want to get down there,” says Den Hartog. “I figure I need to get to Nevada and be a resident to help my chances of getting hired by Tesla.”

Off Radar When Tesla announced plans to build a battery factory last year, Reno wasn’t even on the radar. The smart money was on San Antonio. Desperate not to be shut out, Reno area officials called Tesla and

arranged for a private jet to fly them in for a tour. Tesla officials declined to take the plane trip but made plans to visit Reno shortly afterward.

The city had several advantages. A four-hour drive from Tesla’s factory, Reno is accessible by rail or Interstate 80. There was ample land at TRIC, the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, east of town. FedEx, WalMart and Diapers.com already had operations there. Nevada levies no corporate or income tax.

When Tesla’s team visited TRIC, their hosts were ready with an earth-moving permit, which in many jurisdictions can take weeks to acquire; Tesla could start digging that day.

On Sept. 4 Musk and Nevada officials announced a deal that included as much as $1.25 billion in tax breaks over 20 years and a requirement that half the gigafactory workers be Nevada residents. “The biggest single factor was time-to-completion,” Musk told assembled reporters. “Unless the gigafactory is ready when we need to produce the mass-market affordable electric car, then the vehicle will be stalled.”

When completed, Tesla’s factory will be about the size of 174 football fields. Located on Electric Avenue about 23 miles east of Reno, the construction site is locked down tight. From the scrubby surrounding hills, the two-story facility resembles a top-secret government installation.

The giant construction project will create 9,000 jobs, according to an economic impact report from Nevada’s Office of Economic Development. That’s welcome news for the building industry, says Todd Koch, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada. He says jobs are critical for a union that lost two-thirds of its members and endured at least three suicides after the financial crisis.

Since the Tesla deal was announced, commercial, residential and rental real estate values have surged.

The May 2015 median home price was $284,900, up 19 percent from $240,000 in May 2014, according to the Reno/Sparks Association of Realtors. Developers are snatching up parcels at TRIC.

In the next 20 years, Tesla is expected to generate about $97 billion in economic activity in and around Reno and boost regional GDP by an estimated 26 percent, according to the economic impact report.

Besides the 6,500 factory positions, Tesla is expected to create 16,200 more indirect jobs.

City officials are hopeful that the factory will deliver on those lofty ambitions. Meantime, locals are looking forward to even a modest uptick in economic activity.

Ryan Mayol, a shift manager at the Little Nugget casino on Virginia Street, Reno’s main drag, is already anticipating the so-called multiplier effect.

“All those workers have to have a place to live and spend their money,” he says.

April 10, 2015 Reno, Nevada, a town that built an economy on quickie divorces, is mapping out the second act of its American life.

Faded casinos are being reborn as condominium towers. Discarded cardboard and wood — even junked cars — are being fashioned into gigantic pieces of art for the annual Burning Man festival in the nearby desert. The mayor governs the city of 233,000 with the aid of a kidney donated by her sister.

Few cities needed a second chance as much as Reno. By January 2011 unemployment was 13.9 percent, and two-thirds of homes sold that year were short sales or foreclosures. The malaise contained the seeds of the rebirth: The newly unemployed snapped up dirt-cheap real estate, spawning an artistentrepreneur economy.

“A lot of people like us lost their jobs and started asking, ‘Now what the hell am I going to do?,’” said Eric Raydon. His answer was to go into business with two brothers buying and rebuilding properties in a gentrifying area known as Midtown. “We saw opportunities here.”

As downtowns across the U.S. revive, Reno is among cities that have a tougher task to reinvent themselves. Detroit, the largest U.S. city to go bankrupt, is repopulating downtown towers with companies such as Quicken Loans Inc., which moved from the suburbs in 2010. Atlantic City, New Jersey,

battered by Superstorm Sandy and the closure of several of its casinos, wants to diversify beyond gambling and rebrand itself as a university community.

Reno is rebounding. Unemployment dropped by 1.5 percentage points in February from a year earlier, to 7 percent, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Nationally, joblessness fell by 1.2 percentage points in the period, to 5.8 percent. City sales-tax receipts are projected to rise 7.9 percent in 2015 toward the 2008 peak.

Located 220 miles (350 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, in a desert valley in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, Reno has attracted Bay Area-based Apple Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. Apple built and expanded a data center near Reno beginning in 2013. Tesla plans to begin making lithium-ion batteries at its Reno “Gigafactory” in 2017.

In addition to the brand-name companies, Reno is incubating startups such as TrainerRoad, which has developed a software application for aspiring triathletes, and EasyKeeper, a Web-based app for managing herds of goats. The city has designated a strip of downtown as “Startup Row,” with offices looking out to snow-covered mountains and the Truckee River.

In interviews, entrepreneurs said they were drawn by cheaper real estate, outdoor recreation near Lake Tahoe and a comparatively laid-back, we’re-in-it-together business culture.

Downtown office rents averaged $1.61 a square foot in the last three months of 2014, compared with $5.27 in the overall San Francisco market, according to CBRE Group Inc., a Los Angeles-based commercial-property company.

“It’s cool to be here right now,” said James Elste, who founded Inqiri, a crowdsourcing platform for businesses, in 2012. “It’s got that ‘things are happening’ feel to it. Being in Silicon Valley or Austin, you get the sense that things already happened.”

Just south of downtown, Midtown epitomizes the treasure-from-trash culture: The stores sell recycled furniture, records and clothing; old homes — snapped up by the Raydon brothers and others at recessionary prices — have been refurbished and rented out.

Mayor Hillary Schieve founded a pair of used clothing stores in Midtown in 2007 when, she recalled, the neighborhood was blighted. It was a second act for the 44-year-old Schieve following a figure-skating

career cut short by kidney failure. Schieve received a transplant from her sister and later wagered that during a recession, shoppers would be in the market for affordable secondhand clothing.

“We couldn’t have done something like that during a flourishing economy,” Schieve recalled.

Near the techies and the hipsters are elements of Reno that have stubbornly refused to buy into the new vision.

Downtown remains a hodgepodge of souvenir shops peddling $10 T-shirts, casinos advertising steak dinners for $9.99, pawnshops and payday lenders.

Nearby, the Morris Burner Hotel is a year-round haven of Burners, the term for attendees of the annual Burning Man arts and self-expression festival in the Black Rock Desert, with rooms painted in psychedelic colors and giant sculptures outside. It’s one representation of how the festival’s culture has grown since 1990, when the event drew 90 people from its former home in San Francisco. Now Burning Man, named for the burning of a large wooden effigy, attracts more than 65,000 people, including corporate chiefs such as Tesla’s Elon Musk and Virgin Group Ltd.’s Richard Branson.

Much of the festival’s art originates locally, from people like Matt Schultz, who lost his job as a videoproduction manager in 2009 and visited Burning Man for the first time that year. Inspired by the experience and travel across Asia and Africa, the 35-year-old has designed a giant wooden sculpture of two people embracing, a shipwrecked Spanish galleon and a fishing pier extending over the desert floor.

Next to businesses catering to Burners and urban bicyclists, hundreds of homeless line up for meals at the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission.

One of them is Bob Haney, 61, who drove a taxi in Reno for 25 years until, he said, his license expired seven years ago.

“I’ve seen the old Reno when it was a town to come to,” Haney said. “I love this city, but people need to market it more. Half of the casinos are condominiums now.”

Reno’s casinos made less money in 2014 than they did in 1993, as the city fell to the16th-largest U.S. gambling market by 2012 amid competition from Indian-owned casinos.

Founded in 1868 as a stop on the Transcontinental Railroad, Reno boomed in the 1930s after the state legalized gambling and the nation’s most liberal divorce laws drew unhappy couples. At the time, Reno was Nevada’s largest city; Las Vegas didn’t catch up until the 1950s. Reno now ranks third behind Sin City and one of its suburbs, Henderson.

As Reno faded, its leaders turned to bowling, balloon races and rodeos to revive its fortunes. Its latest attempt at reinvention holds more promise, as high costs and regulations in the Bay Area play to Nevada’s strength as a lightly regulated frontier state, said Chris Baum, president and chief executive of the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority.

“The world changes,” Baum said. “And you have to change with it.”

Reno reborn: The biggest little city goes farm-to-fork in style March 3, 2015

There's something distinctly different about Reno these days.

Oh, the neon arch still proclaims this the biggest little city in the world, and you'll still find weary gamblers plying the slots. But the city is suddenly alive with new distilleries and craft breweries, grain-to-glass bars, farm-to-fork restaurants and a buzzy arts scene.

And the newest downtown lodging is an eco-friendly, nonsmoking, nongambling boutique hotel.

Instead of a casino, the Whitney Peak Hotel has a gigantic bouldering gym, and its edifice holds the world's tallest climbing wall -- so intrepid guests can gaze down at the "Biggest Little City" arch next door from 164 feet. We got dizzy just looking up.

In fact, that dazed, delighted feeling lasted all weekend as we suddenly realized -- Reno has farms?

And a buzzy arts scene? And a glitzy hotel sans slots and smokes? And that's not all?

How awesome is it to arrive in a place you thought you knew and discover you were delightfully wrong? We ponder the question as we stroll the galleries of the Nevada Museum of Art, just a few blocks from the Truckee River, which bisects the city. Built in 2003, the museum's striking fourstory building is a huge black mass with cantilevered edges and curves wrapped in crimped, charcoal-hued zinc, its lines echoing Nevada's Black Rock formation. Inside, the exhibits are eclectic, fascinating and thought-provoking. We gaze at paintings and works from the museum's permanent collections and check out a watershed sculpture exhibit, an amazingly bizarre taxidermied art exhibit and rooms filled with watercolors and sketches of coral reef destruction in the South Pacific.

There's more art outside in Reno's Riverwalk District or, as city leaders have dubbed it, "the new downtown." Parks and benches woo passers-by, ducks quack happily and murals and sculptures gleam in the winter sunlight. There's a wine walk on the third Saturday of each month -- involving 28 restaurants, wine bars and boutiques. A Whitewater Park for kayakers, a fly-fishing zone, art festivals, blues festivals and restaurants everywhere.

Actually, they could have just named the new downtown Mark Estee Row. Reno's celebrity chef has opened three new restaurants here in the last year alone: the rustic-chic Heritage at the Whitney Peak Hotel; arty-chic Chez Louie in the museum and cafeteria-chic Reno Provisions, his just-opened cafe, gourmet food shop, event space and commercial kitchen and bakery for all of the above.

Campo, Estee's 4-year-old Italian restaurant, is a block away.

The city's casino focus is being slowly replaced by other, considerably more delicious things, Estee says: "We're part restaurant culture, part startup culture, part art culture. There's food, outdoor activities, music, art, breweries, distilleries -- everything!"

We're sitting in Reno Provisions on a recent Monday morning. It's the end of a holiday weekend, and the city is only just beginning to stir. There may be a distinct lack of buzzy energy outdoors, but inside, the air fairly crackles with it. A boisterous chorus of hellos and high-fives greets Estee as the chef bounds down the stairs to the big Provisions basement kitchen. Bread, focaccia and housemade crackers cool on racks. Aromatic sauces burble in pots. Sides of beef await butchering in a very chilly, brightly lit locker. And everything came from farms and ranches nearby.

"The local food movement here is huge," Estee says, "and the Co-op is the most amazing thing."

He's talking about the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, whose 2-year-old startup, DROPP (Distributors of Regional Organic Produce and Products), has given scores of small farms and ranches a way to connect with local chefs. The farmers and ranchers post their offerings online, the chefs shop on the site and the co-op and some of the larger restaurants facilitate delivery. "It's a tight-knit, close community," Estee says. "The Peppermill Hotel brings things back to the little restaurants. We're bringing the outside in."

It's the fulfillment, he says, of a dream for everyone, including the governor of Nevada, who first voiced his vision of a Reno "food hub" two years ago and the University of Nevada's High Desert Farm Initiative. And the bottom line, of course, is on the plate -- at Reno Provisions, it's atop gleaming metal cafeteria trays, their indentations filled with wedges of organic vegetable-filled frittata, house-made sausages and a brilliant pink "super salad" of beets and quinoa. At Heritage, it's local heritage pork, grass-fed beef and craft beer from a brewery five miles away.

It's all delicious. And there's nary a slot in sight.

"We don't need to keep reinventing ourselves," Estee says. "We just need to tell the story."

Hidden Gemsaround Reno Chef Mark Estee may be juggling multiple restaurants, but he's had plenty of time to discover other Reno hot spots, too, including his favorite dive, a pho spot that's open until 3 a.m. Here are five of his favorite places:The Nevada Museum of Art, the state's only accredited museum houses an ever-changing array of exhibits, as well as a permanent collection; 160 W. Liberty St.; www.nevadaart.org SĂźp, a sandwich and soup spot in Midtown, 669 W. Virginia St.;www.stockpotinc.com Two Chicks, breakfast and comfort food in Midtown, 752 W. Virginia St.;twochicksreno.com South Creek Pizza Co., wood-fired pizza, 45 Foothill Road;www.southcreekpizza.com Golden Flower, a Vietnamese restaurant that's open into the wee hours; 205 W. Fifth St.; www.goldenflowerreno.com

Farming Fish in the Nevada Desert Silver State entrepreneurs are pioneering ways to cultivate food in the high desert of Nevada. Hungry Mother Organics is a farm that's raising produce and fish in a greenhouse that conserves both water and energy.

Grow Your Business Without Drowning in Debt DECEMBER 5, 2014

The startup dream goes something like this: A couple of entrepreneurs with a great idea hole up in a basement and hatch software and social networks that bloom into billion-dollar businesses.

The reality is much more complicated. Businesses don’t bloom into billion-dollar companies without a significant amount of capital. Andraising money comes with a thorny question for startups: What might the venture have to sacrifice to obtain the funding to fuel growth?

Giving up equity too early in the life cycle of a company can be extremely expensive. But starving a company of funding out of a fear of giving away too much ownership can hamstring its potential.

Here are three things to understand before raising capital to fund business growth: Related: How to Invest for Equity in a Startup

1. Equity is expensive.

If you have an early-stage startup with a promising future, giving over equity might end up being the most expensive way to raise capital.

While a venture capitalist or an angel investor might think that a 50 percent stake in your company is a fair exchange for an infusion of funding, you need to look beyond the current state of your business (a couple of coders working at a few computers). Calculate what this means if your company turns into the next Facebook, Salesforce or Instagram.

Instead of trading equity, consider using convertible debt, which delays a valuation of a company until the first institutional investor buys into the firm. At that point, the company will be more mature, which can lead to a more equitable valuation of the startup for founders.

Convertible debt can work well for both investors and entrepreneurs. For investors, it cuts the risk associated with a pure equity stake while maintaining the upside of an equity position. For entrepreneurs, it delays the valuation until the company has matured to a level that makes the assessment more than a guessing game.

Related: Raising Money Using Convertible Debt

2. Self-funding can limit growth.

Bootstrapping a company to its full potential is a lofty goal, but it's almost always unattainable. Businesses simply need capital to fund their growth. And most savvy business owners realize that without outside capital, they will never grow their company to its true potential.

If you're considering self-financing a company, think about the downsides before committing to this approach: Will it impede growth, restrict your market share or lead to a cash crunch?

Self-financed companies can find themselves in an unenviable position possible, running out of cash and desperate for financing. This can lead to a complete loss of leverage at the negotiating table with banks, venture capitalists or private equity groups.

“Entrepreneurs should always have a trusted advisor or CFO who can see ahead and make decisions proactively rather than reactively,” Dusty Wunderlich, CEO of my client Bristlecone Holdings, tells me.

“When entrepreneurs lose cash flow, they give up leverage and negotiating power and risk losing too much ownership in a desperate attempt to raise funding,” says Wunderlich, who is also a partner at private-equity group DCA Capital Partners.

Related: Self-Financing Your Startup

3. The burn rate matters.

A burn rate -- the rate at which a company spends its startup capital -- can vary wildly. Software companies can get off the ground and grow with a slim budget, but manufacturing companies and hardware makers consume enormous amounts of capital.

Bootstrapping a software startup is possible. But a manufacturing company will require significant financing or investor capital from the start.

Every business has different funding needs. But certain warning signs signal that a company is overleveraging or taking on too much debt.

“If you are taking on debt for operating expenses, you are probably not that healthy,” Wunderlich says. “Debt for assets, infrastructure or acquisitions is a more appropriate use of debt or leverage

3 Alternative Tech Startup Cities With Less Traffic, More Housing (Infographic)

BY JOHN SOLARI | May 8, 2014| 7 Comments

Silicon Valley’s powerful entrepreneurial economy has resulted in some major downsides: gridlocked traffic, high housing prices and a growing and aggressive tech backlash. Today, three cities previously known more as vacation destinations are now legitimate alternatives to Silicon Valley life at a much more affordable price. For the adventurous startup or mature tech company, there's life beyond red taillights, long commutes and protestors blockading buses.

Las Vegas, Denver and Reno, Nev., mix together a vibrant startup culture with world-class recreation or entertainment.

And they all do it in places with plenty of affordable housing, a few million fewer highway-clogging cars and minus the debate over gentrification.

Related: What Elon Musk Really Thinks of 'Silicon Valley' 1. Las Vegas. Tony Hsieh gets credit for jump-starting Las Vegas’ startup scene with his $350 million Downtown Project, but the city has grown into much more than his personal project. Switch Communication’s founder, Rob Roy, is pumping money and energy into the InNEVation Center, a collaboration space that delivers some of the fastest Internet speeds in the world (courtesy of his company's SuperNAP data center) and serves as a meeting place for startup and economic development events.

Las Vegas’ Downtown Container Park, where an enormous metal praying mantis sculpture shoots flames out of its antennae, hosts live music events along with unique retail and dining spots. It's helping draw new hospitality sector investment like Seth Schorr’s new ultramodern Downtown Grand hotel, a gaming, dining and entertainment venue.

While the VegasTech Fund, founded by Hsieh, is a big influencer in town, early-stage and maturing Las Vegas companies can seek financing from the Las Vegas Valley Angels, Brennan Capital and state sources like the Battle Born Venture Fund and the Silver State Opportunities Fund.

Competitive advantages: Las Vegas is an hour's flight away from California's two biggest population centers and the center of the convention and trade show universe. Representatives of the largest companies in the world touch down for business networking and product launches. Las Vegas has affordable housing and business costs, anchor businesses like Zappos and Switch Communications and a year-round industry-event schedule. Median home prices are $164,700, according to Zillow; about half a million dollars less than San Jose's.

Related: Tech Firms Seeking Talent Spring for Spacious, Luxe Quarters 2. Denver. A healthy startup ecosystem includes companies of all maturity levels, whereby ones that have grown from shoestring outfits to market leaders might reinvest in the community. And Denver has businesses in fast-growing industries and companies large and small, young and mature.

Denver-based businesses like HomeAdvisor, now a subsidiary of IAC with 1,200 employees, participate in community-building events like Denver Startup Week.

At the center of Denver’s startup activity is Galvanize, a 30,000-square-foot entrepreneurial campus including a venture capital funding firm, as well as collaborative co-working space and a social hub for events and education. Companies with origins in the Denver area include Mapquest, Photobucket, Rally Software, Cloudzilla and Forkly.

Firms like Grotech Ventures, with offices in Denver, are financing startups and are joined by large Boulder-based funds like the Foundry Group.

Competitive advantage: Denver is located in a mountainous region that many consider more of a vacation destination than a business hub. Indeed Colorado ski resorts are just down the highway and the area's mountain biking and hiking trails are virtually endless. Denver offers all of this, while retaining an affordable cost of living. Home prices, at a median level of $254,800, are higher than in Reno, Nev., and Las Vegas, but still less than half the price of San Jose's.

Related: The 10 Best Cities for Buying or Selling a Home 3. Reno’s allure lies with its geographic location, affordability and emerging and energetic startup scene. It’s a morning’s drive from Silicon Valley and just a half-hour car trip from the ski slopes and beaches of Lake Tahoe. That mix of business friendliness, quality of life and entrepreneurial energy is attracting small, scrappy startups and the satellite offices of some of the world's largest technology companies.

The Biggest Little City has transitioned from a gambling mecca into an entrepreneurial hot spot.

Tesla Motors is eyeing the city to house its new “gigafactory,” a multibillon-dollar battery-production headquarters; Apple has already built a data center there and Intuit, Microsoft Licensing and Drone America are headquartered in town. Homegrown startups are sprouting downtown. Reno’s Startup

Row along the Truckee River features cloud-computing companies and fitness-software outfits, a vibrant co-working collective and a hardware developer that builds microcontrollers.

Reno's vibrant entrepreneurial culture includes 1 Million Cups events, hackathons and startup weekends all year long. Marmot Properties is remodeling and updating scores of Reno homes in central locations to house the influx of entrepreneurs.

Capital needed to fuel startup activity is also available: The Silver State Opportunities Fund is investing $50 million in Nevada-based business. And the Battle Born Venture Fund is a state fund that provides critical funding for early-stage, high-growth companies in Nevada. The Reno Accelerator Fund invests in early-stage companies in the capital.

Competitive advantage: Reno’s home prices are a world away from Silicon Valley's. The median Reno home price is $198,700, according to Zillow (less than a third of San Jose's) so nearby tech startups and maturing companies don’t have to worry about employees struggling to find homes or commuting long hours.

Reno’s tax environment is considered business friendly. And city's startup scene is alongside a downtown whitewater kayak park with terrific skiing and a web of mountain bike trails nearby. Plus, Reno’s thriving bar, restaurant, coffee and entertainment scene includes Campo, named one of the nation’s best new restaurants by Esquire in 2012.

Below see an infographic created by the Economic Development Agency for Western Nevada to market Reno's startup culture.

GM IPO Soaring, But GM as an Investment? Blech. - Deal Journal - WSJ

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/18/gm-ipo-soaring-but-gm-as-an-inve...

NOVEMBER 18, 2010, 12:26 PM ET

General Motors clearly isn’t having a tough time finding buyers — when it comes to its stock. Shares are up about 7% on its first trading day as a refurbished public company, and that’s after the offering was increased and the price raised.

But not everyone is enthusiastic. Earlier, I wrote skeptically about the initial public offering in this Writing on the Wall column, and reached out to potential investors. Almost all contacted were less-than floored with the prospect of owning G.M.

Associated Press

Evan Kirkpatrick, a financial adviser in Seattle, said he’s not surprised with the early gains GM has made in the market today, but “with the government remaining a significant shareholder after the IPO, the uncertainty risk exceeds the potential gain for our clients,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the hype surrounding the offering lead to high volume and potentially rapid gains, but we prefer more predictable”

investments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, advisers in Michigan were less skeptical. David Aquilina, an adviser in Troy, Mich., said GM is really a “new company” and that there will be “tremendous drive to get it right” but cautions all bets are off if we get a double-dip recession.

“The GM IPO is a long term hold, and that they will be an owner along with the U.S. government,” Aquilina said. “UAW and CAW, each with a vested interest in seeing the company do well.”

Robert Barone, who heads Ancora West Advisors in Reno, Nevada, said much of GM’s problems have to do with a customer base “loaded” with debt.

“GM is facing a saturated car market in an industry with loads of capacity,” Barone said. “There is a reasonable probability that they will still have trouble competing due to the high fixed costs involved in U.S. production.

“Unless GM can reinvent itself, and become a low-cost manufacturer of quality vehicles at competitive prices, the IPO will more than likely turn out to be a poor investment over the next decade.”

Bill Smead, manager of the Smead Value Fund, sees GM at the mercy of a bigger macroeconomic picture, one that doesn’t favor the remade car company.

“Along with emerging markets and commodities, these cyclical companies show you it’s late in the party,” Smead said “In my time in the investment business, I have never seen such a ridiculous premium put on this kind of additional risk.”

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GM IPO Soaring, But GM as an Investment? Blech. - Deal Journal - WSJ

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/18/gm-ipo-soaring-but-gm-as-an-inve...

And even retail investors were cool to the offering.

Becky Sturm, who owns a beauty shop in St. Paul, Minn., said she doesn’t want any part of “bailed out” companies and this extends to the products they buy as well.

“I have purchased GM cars and trucks my entire life, but being a small business owner and witnessing the behavior during and the mismanagement of the companies that were bailed out by our government, I will never purchase or recommend another GM car in my lifetime.”

Like Sturm, Elizabeth Cohee, an attorney in Oakland, Calif., isn’t recommending the products or the stock.

“GM has shown that they believe themselves to be immune from adherence to the standard practices that provide even a modicum of protection to the average investor,” Cohee said. “A certain amount of trust is required when a company asks investors to finance their operations; GM has demonstrated that they are not worthy of that trust.”

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