Jeff Jacobs says he’s at the halfway mark of his extensive redevelopment plan for West Fourth Street.
Jacobs, chief executive officer of Jacobs Entertainment, April 17 announced an additional $128 million of development for J Resort and the land surrounding it. Redevelopment work includes creating a new grand front entrance to the hotel-casino, adding a 400-seat banquet hall, and creation of an outdoor festival grounds that will host its inaugural concert May 10-11.
Additional new and redevelopment projects also include transforming the shuttered Bonanza Inn hotel at 214 W. Fourth St. into a 57-unit affordable workplace housing complex that will be known as The Breeze, and creation of Glow Gardens, a 300-seat special events facility that will accommodate several existing structures on West Fourth Street — the former Chapel of the Bells wedding chapel, and the historic Nystrom House — along with a newly-constructed atrium and wedding chapel space.
“It will be a combination of historic and new buildings all coming together,” Jacobs said. “We are in about year 10 of a 20-year overnight success story. We are about halfway complete. This whole section of downtown, we see it as our mission to bring it back.
“It’s not what it was and it’s not what it will be — we are sort of at the 50-yard line,” Jacobs added. “Including this $128 million that we will spend, we will be at over a half-billion dollars invested.”
Jacobs Entertainment announced an additional $128 million of development for J Resort and the land surrounding it. Redevelopment work includes creating a new grand front entrance to the hotel-casino, adding a 400-seat banquet hall, and creation of an outdoor festival grounds. (Courtesy photo)
Jacobs Entertainment has owned the nearby Gold Dust West casino for three decades. Jacobs increased his stake in Northern Nevada in 2017 when he bought the former Sands Regency hotel-casino, a purchase marked the start of an unprecedented buying spree on the west side of downtown Reno.
Over the last seven years, Jacobs Entertainment has purchased dozens of buildings on more than 80 parcels totaling more than 100 acres of land in the West Fourth Street and West Second Street corridors, Jacobs said. Many of the dilapidated motels that harken back to Reno’s heyday as a place for quickie divorces were torn down, though their presence lives on in the form of neon signage at Glow Plaza.
Inside the new north front entrance being built by Plenium Builders will be sculptures by famed New York sculptor Alice Aycock, as well as a sports-themed lounge and additional gaming, Jacobs said. The Rolling Arts Banquet Hall, meanwhile, will feature as many as 50 European sports cars, including five Ferrari supercars.
The J Resort festival grounds will be able to accommodate as many as 15,000 people over the course of a multi-day festival, Jacobs said, with concerts serving as a major draw for the J Resort and its many amenities. The venue kicks off its inaugural concert with the two-day Drifters Music Festival featuring country stars Easton Corbin, Walker Hayes and Randy Houser, as well as a host of rising country artists.
“Our whole approach is the same as Steve Wynn’s – if you build something really nice, the people at the top end of the market will want to see it, and if they want to see it, everyone else will too,” Jacobs told NNBW. “It’s small because we are only 700 rooms (at J Resort), but as we grow over the next five to 10 years, there will be a lot more amenities coming, and we will be the nicest casino in the market.
“We are an art-entertainment-themed resort, and the festival grounds are part of the entertainment piece along with the Glow Plaza,” he added.
Erik Fong and One Studio D+A are the architects for Glow Gardens and other redevelopment plans.
In addition to the festival grounds, Jacobs said plans to construct a Las Vegas-style showroom that will serve dual purposes. It can accommodate as many as 4,000 people inside during Reno’s colder months, and in the more temperate late spring and summer months the back wall of the facility will open on to the festival grounds for large-scale outdoor acts and concerts. The facility will be similar in operation to the popular Jacobs Pavilion outdoor amphitheater on the waterfront of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.
Jacobs Entertainment recently completed work on a 60-unit market-rate apartment building at the corners of Arlington Avenue and West Second Street. Jacobs plans on erecting a 65-unit affordable housing project that will replace the Sarrazin Arms apartments on West Third Street, which is currently owned by the Reno Housing Authority.
Jacobs said work on The Breeze and the RHA replacement building will start after Jacobs Entertainment secures Tax Incremental Financing on its commercial development plans, along with the residential housing at 245 N. Arlington Ave., because those projects will generate approximately $25 million of the $40 to $50 million development costs for those projects, he told NNBW.
“We will direct real estate taxes for the next 10 years to create those two affordable housing projects,” Jacobs said.
Lastly, Jacobs said his master plan may include new vertical construction that would increase room count at J Resort to 2,000, though that component depends entirely on the demand that’s shown over the next decade or so.
“We have shared the next four years of our master plan,” he said. “After these projects, we have talked about a new rooftop pool and indoor-outdoor spa, and after we build out all our amenities, we will know then if the demand from California in particular is there to see the bright shiny new attraction in downtown Reno. If it is, we will start looking at adding some towers.”
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