PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
A row of 19th century buildings are some of those the University of Nevada, Reno wants to demolish.
Reid vs. Bundys In a Senate speech on the preservation of Nevada’s Gold Butte area and other historic and natural resources, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada said, “A dangerous group of militants staged an armed takeover of the [Oregon] refuge. They came with their canvas shirts and their camouflage pants and their guns and their all-terrain vehicles to take over the federal property. And they did. This particular episode of domestic terrorism has roots in Nevada, I’m sorry to say. They were led by the sons of Cliven Bundy—Cliven, who, as we speak, is where he should be, in jail.” Cliven Bundy and four of his sons face federal conspiracy and weapons indictments growing out of the 2014 standoff with federal officials near Bunkerville over his refusal to pay his bills. His sons Ammon and Ryan are also charged in connection with a separate incident, the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. The attorney for Ammon Bundy responded with a video that said, in part, “Please try to address the ideas and spend less time making attacks on individuals, particularly individuals you represent.” And Cliven Bundy’s wife Carol posted a video calling on Reid to visit her at the ranch to “look me square in the eye” and tell her that her husband and sons are domestic terrorists.
Nevadans go party on anti-trust The U.S. House has approved H.R.2745, a measure that allegedly seeks to reconcile separate anti-trust enforcement activities of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, but which consumer advocates say would injure a regulatory process that protects the public. The action came on a nearly party line vote. Within the Nevada delegation, it was a party line vote— Republican Reps. Mark Amodei, Cresent Hardy and Joe Heck voted for the bill and Democrat Dina Titus voted against. The White House issued a statement calling the measure unnecessary: “While the process the FTC uses to challenge mergers differs from DOJ’s, there is no evidence that it affects outcomes or prejudices parties. The FTC and DOJ share joint guidelines that set forth a common analytical framework for reviewing mergers.” Consumers Union and the American Academy of Family Physicians oppose the measure.
Trump did it Smithsonian Magazine’s website is reporting on a “217-millionyear-old murder mystery” at Nevada’s Icthyosaur State Park. Paleontologists are at the park trying to determine why the bones of about 40 icthyosaurs are at the single site, similar to a Cerro Ballena, Chile, grouping of the seagoing mammals. Until now, “Some sort of deadly algae bloom seemed like a ICHTHYOSAUR STATE PARK good candidate,” the magazine reports. “And more recently, one researcher jumped into the deep end of speculation to suggest the ichthyosaurs had been killed by an enormous squid, which carefully arranged the bones in its lair. All the while, the true story of what happened has remained in the rock.” “We have some good preliminary clues and ideas ... but we are still actively debating and discussing this and still investigating the date,” said National Museum of Natural History paleontologist Neil Kelley.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
APRIL 14, 2016
Enemy at the gateway Locals battle campus sprawl In May 1903, a small, poorly-tended reservoir on the grounds of Nevada State University at the corner of by Ninth and Center streets came Dennis Myers apart. Water rushed down the hill and flooded homes in the neighborhood. Something similar is going on now. University of Nevada, Reno, agents have fanned out in the neighborhood, buying the 19th century homes they once flooded, to expand the campus to Interstate 80. Some local residents are trying to stop them.
“It is proposed to involve closure of Center and Lake Streets...” UNR Strategic Plan
Information on the neighborhood at issue can be found in the Winter 2016 edition of Footprints, available from the Historic Reno Preservation Society
“It’s one of the only nearly intact rows of pre-1900 homes in Reno,” said Debbie Hinman, who wrote an account of the neighborhood history for Footprints, the publication of the Historic Reno Preservation Society. “There are some over in the Elko and Eureka street neighborhood, but we don’t have a lot of 1890s homes sitting around, all in a row like
that.” Most of the homes are built in a Queen Anne style. The homes were familiar landmarks for generations of students. For those in the 1960s and ’70s, for instance, one home with a tower recalls the years when a large poster of W.C. Fields was displayed in a window of the tower. The tower and poster were photographed many times, appearing in the campus newspaper and yearbook. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, tales of the past attest to its place in city history A home on Eighth Street between Center and Lake is reachable only by a footpath. It was the home of Frances Humphrey, a well known local educator and counselor. She lived there from her birth to her death. Other houses in the area were homes to Sen. Thomas “Spike” Wilson, the Ferris family (George Washington Gale Ferris invented the Ferris wheel), and Nevada State Veterinarian Winfred Mack. Mack also worked at the university. In fact, most of the homes have university connections. “Most of them, people who lived there, were connected to the university, so it was a true university neighborhood,” Hinman said. In a home on Lake Street, there
lived a woman who saw her children leaving her one by one. When a son went to California to buy himself a wedding suit, she doused herself with kerosene, strapped herself to her bed with baling wire, and set herself on fire. She perished, but the home survived and Reno Mayor Edwin Roberts and his wife later lived there. A campus plan for the neighborhood—which UNR calls the Gateway Project—shows tall buildings and a bus station. “This vibrant retail- and academicoriented neighborhood center will be developed primarily by the university and will extend campus life to the south of the current campus, in the area between campus and I-80,” reads a campus publicity document on the project. A campus “strategic plan” reads, “Planning for the Gateway Project is a collaborative effort with the City of Reno and the Regional Transportation Commission. It is proposed to involve closure of Center and Lake Streets between 8th and 9th streets and routing traffic towards the Virginia Street corridor. We will explore the possibility of constructing an academic facility, such as a College of Business complex. The Gateway Project will also likely include student housing for upperclassmen and outdoor recreational fields.”
Context Opponents of the project will take their concerns to the Reno City Council next month, but they may be acting too late. The project has been under way for many years (“More redevelopment” RN&R, Oct. 15, 2009), and the city council signed onto an early iteration of it. Moreover, UNR has acquired all but one property on the Center Street corridor. Local figures who deal with the city council on a regular basis say they suspect the campus has the upper hand. “They [residents] have a lot of chutzpah, but—,” said one, his voice trailing off. “They’re the Owens Valley and the university is Los Angeles,” said another. “They needed to figure out what was happening a lot earlier.” Nevertheless, City Councilmember Jenny Brekhus said, “They [the homes in the neighborhood] have so much meaning and context to the area. I mean,
