Andrew Zutshi's off-campus life is different
than those of his fraternity brothers at
Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters in
California and elsewhere. Zutshi, 19, is an
officer at the SAE house on the corner of
East Ninth Street and Evans Avenue,
across the street and two blocks down from
the University of Nevada, Reno's main
entrance at North Center Street. On visits
to fellow chapters at San Diego State
University, Louisiana State University and
elsewhere, Zutshi has surveyed an array of
neighborhood retail establishments
bookstores,music stores, smoke shops, jewelers,
tattoo parlors, body-piercing emporiums,
skate shops, bicycle shops, clothing
boutiques, photocopy centers, video
arcades, pizzerias, sandwich shops, coffeehouses,
bars and more.
"You see more locally owned and operated
places around those colleges," Zutshi
says. "It's kind of like a city within a
city there."
But UNR has no "college town" a
concentration of nearby businesses catering
to a campus community. UNR is known as
a "commuter campus" because a relatively
small proportion of its 14,000-plus students
live in campus housing. There are 14
off-campus retail businesses largely
spread apart from each other (and three
of them closed for remodeling this summer)
within a 10-minute walk of the
220-acre main campus bound on the west
by North Virginia Street, the north by
North McCarran Boulevard, the east by
Evans Avenue and the south by East
Ninth Street.
"A lot of local food places should come
around here," says Zutshi, a health-ecology
major. "It's said UNR is a good school for
people, and Reno is a college town. But I
don't think so."
But the times they are a-changin'.
UNR's booming student population and
expanding campus, a proposed university
master plan that would foster off-campus
retail zones and city officials' intentions to
link the downtown tourist zone with the
"Campus on the Hill" four blocks north
point to a vibrant commercial future for the
university neighborhood.
One harbinger is the opening on July 3
of a Walgreens drugstore at 750 N.
Virginia St., on a leased vacant lot on an
overpass of Interstate 80, two blocks south
of the main university entrance. The 24-
hour store, in 15,400 square feet, sits in
what has been a retail dead zone between
campus and downtown. The store sells
20,000 items including UNR clothing and
souvenirs. Gigantic tube trusses support the
structure on its concrete deck, set over the
six-lane freeway.
"The location is perfect because of the
good visibility and the proximity to both
the university and to downtown," says
Walgreens corporate spokeswoman Carol
Hively of the second Walgreens to open in
Reno in the past five years (the other is at
South Virginia Street and Moana Lane).
"Walgreens chooses only the best locations
and carefully researches locations for lasting
success. That should give some indication
of our confidence in the area."
"Walgreens is your link to downtown,"
says Neal Cobb, who's lived most of his 63
years within two blocks of campus, chaired
the West University Neighborhood
Advisory Board for the city of Reno and
still serves on the city's historic resources
commission, although he recently moved to
Golden Valley. "Walgreens also is the link
to anything and everything students might
want that won't be available (at the student
union's ASUN Bookstore) on campus
the pharmaceuticals, lotions, all the stuff.
Once you have a successful retailer in the
area, others are going to follow."
Cobb has seen multiple businesses
sprout, wither and expire in the university
neighborhood over the past half-century.
The building at 10 E. Ninth St., on the
corner of North Center Street immediately
across from the main
campus entrance, was the Wolf Den
bar/restaurant in the 1940s, then a
Chinese eatery called the Library, and
later housed a string of other restaurants
leading up to its present occupant, the
Breakaway bar/restaurant. The next-door
building at 58 E. Ninth had a barbershop,
bookstores and other businesses before
becoming home to the Beer Barrel pub. A
Kinko's photocopy shop opened and
closed in the adjacent space at 60 E.
Ninth St. that later was a sandwich shop
(and is to be again this October). The
Twisted Chimney coffeehouse on the corner
of 12th and North Virginia streets
lasted less than a year in 1999.
But Cobb is optimistic that Walgreens
coupled with careful university development
will be a catalyst for a commercial
belt serving the campus population,
residents of the west university and
downtown neighborhoods, and area
workers or tourists. The triad of customer
bases is a vital combination to sustain offcampus
businesses, given the summertime
drop-off of student traffic between UNR's
May commencement and the start of fall
semester in late August, Cobb and local
retailers say.
The Pub and Sub which for 28
years has been an off-campus hangout,
serving sandwiches, pizza and beer and
featuring a pool table and beer garden
prospers on the corner of 10th and
Ralston streets, four blocks west of campus,
because of its year-round mix of
clientele, says owner Steve Mathers.
After UNR students leave for the summer,
alumni and their families continue to
patronize his establishment, as do neighborhood
residents and workers from the
health-care offices around nearby Saint
Mary's Regional Medical Center, at the
northwest edge of downtown. "We're fortunate
we have so many people who grew up
here and went to college, or lived in this
neighborhood and come here," says
Mathers, 50, who opened the Pub and Sub
as a 22-year-old finance major at UNR.
The 4,800-square-foot building on a
7,000-square-foot lot had housed two tiny
groceries before Mathers moved in.
"This neighborhood is one of the most
dense neighborhoods in the city, about
seven times denser than any other neighborhood
in the city," says Mathers, who
served seven years on the West University
Neighborhood Advisory Board. "The city
average is about three-and-a-half people
per acre. In this neighborhood it's 21 people
per acre, year-round. That's one of the
reasons we survive here."
Year-round customer traffic makes or
breaks an off-campus enterprise, and so
does access to customers coming or leaving
campus, Cobb says. UNR additions of
parking in its expanding campus should
encourage off-campus retail, he says.
"With the more parking the university
provides like with the new Brian Whalen
garage (a 1,003-space complex on North
Virginia Street just south of Lawlor Events
Center) and lots up north of campus using
the (university) shuttle system you'll have
a transition area utilized by the residents as
well as the campus, that isn't either college or
residential," Cobb says. "We'll have a commercial
belt, if done right, that's the buffer
between the college itself and the residents
adjacent to it. It's going to bring the downtown
up to the university. Casino workers
will be using the same Walgreens as the college
kids and faculty.
"I don't see how in the world it can lose."
Student growth and a concomitant
expansion of campus facilities and land
play into the vision of a college town banding
UNR.
Just as the population of the Biggest
Little City and its environs keep getting
bigger with an annual growth rate of about
2.5 percent, UNR's student population is
growing. Actually, it's booming thanks
in part to the state of Nevada's Millennium
Scholarships, funded by national tobaccosettlement
money, which since 2000 have
offered tuition dollars to Nevada high
school graduates who've accumulated minimum
3.0 grade-point averages.
UNR's total head count for students was
6,317 in 1970, 8,524 in 1980 and 10,572 in
1990. In 2000 it was 12,532 and this fall is
14,316. At projected rates, fall 2003's head
count is forecast to be 15,262, and by 2010,
19,976. Meanwhile, the number of combined
faculty and staff if funded at proportional
rates by the state Legislature
would grow from its present 1,650 at a rate
of 2 to 3 percent a year. The campus population
of students and employees by the end
of the decade could exceed 25,000.
More on-campus housing is planned.
UNR's seven residence halls are at full
capacity with 1,500 students (up from 1,000
in 1991), and four construction phases are
planned over the next seven years to almost
double that figure. A 250-bed addition to
the New Hall on North Virginia and
Artemesia streets will come on line by
August 2003, says Buzz Nelson, UNR assistant
vice president for facilities services.
Three other proposed phases include converting
the UNR-owned University Inn on
10th and North Virginia streets from a hotel
into dormitory housing 350 students by
2005; building a residence hall next to the
University Inn to house 300 students by
2007; and constructing another residence
hall north of the current Canada Hall on
North Virginia Street, to house 300 students
by 2009. UNR also is considering building a
married student/graduate student complex
northeast of campus by 2009, to accommodate
200 residents, Nelson says.
"Campus is becoming less commuterdriven,"
says John Trent, UNR's interim
director of communications. "The influx of
Millennium Scholarship students has been
a big help in building more of a sense of
community on campus," he says. "The traditional
view of our campus has been that
we have an older student body that shuttles
immediately from campus to their work in
the casinos. That still might be true, but
we're finding that more students are spending
more time on campus, and that businesses
are realizing that this is a great market
to tap into."
To date, three factors have inhibited
growth of an off-campus college town, says
Brian Bonnenfant, a program manager
with the Bureau of Business and Economic
Research in UNR's College of Business
Administration. Foremost is competition
from on-campus retailers, he says.
The university contracts with a commercial
food vendor to operate a Taco Bell,
Pizza Hut and several other mall-type fastfood
outlets. The Jot Travis Student Union
offers three cafeteria-type restaurants, and
the university has a cafe in its student services
building. The student union also contains
the ASUN Bookstore, which in addition to
12,000 titles of general books, sells textbooks,
school supplies, emblematic clothing
and gifts, toiletries, snack food, and
computers and software that students and
employees can purchase on discounted
manufacturer prices.
A second factor working against off-campus
retailers is land availability, Bonnenfant
says. "The campus is sandwiched by residential
neighborhoods that aggressively fight
proposed commercial development. The
commercially zoned areas around the campus
are limited to Virginia Street and south
of campus.Within those areas there is very
limited vacant space. Figure in the county
codes that dictate so many parking spaces per
occupancy, and that results in a large
chunk of real estate required to open a
commercial business."
A third factor challenging would-be
retailers is the high price for facilities and
land zoned for commercial use,
Bonnenfant says.
"There's not a lot of retail space," says
Paul Doege, owner of Recycled Records, on
South Virginia Street, who in 1998 opened a
satellite store of his used-music business in a
500-square-foot commercial space at the
front of an apartment building at 812 N.
Virginia St., a two-block walk from UNR's
main entrance.
Much of the retail space near the university
was taken up years ago by motels serving
downtown casino tourists, Doege says.
"Maybe in a few years, someone with a lot of
money may buy up the land and tear down
the motels and put in college-friendly retail."
That could happen. If UNR's 20-year
master plan, to be completed in 2003, fulfills
its goals college-town-like retail will
permanently become part of the campus
community.
The master plan will show a university
campus expanded by 350 additional acres,
stretching from Sierra Street east to Wells
Avenue or Sutro Street, and from North
McCarran south to I-80, Nelson says. By
2012, the campus acreage already may
have doubled, he says.And the master plan
supports two large off-campus retail zones
between East Ninth Street and I-80,
from Sierra Street east to Lake Street; and
on the west side of North Virginia Street,
north of College Drive to McCarran
Nelson says.
Such commercial development "is not
only inevitable but extremely important to
the growth of the campus and the university,"
he says. "There need to be support
services for the people living in what
will be a much more populous university
community."
Bonnenfant cites a preliminary redevelopment
plan by the city of Reno for its
downtown entertainment zone to merge
with UNR's campus. "They are talking
about relocating the (Fleischmann)
Planetarium (currently off North Virginia
Street a mile north of I-80 in the university's
northwest campus area) to the south of
campus and adding other educational and
entertainment venues. This would generate
a lot of retail."
Even before the appearance of
Walgreens, retail sales continued to
increase among the dozen-plus retailers in
the university neighborhood.
Sales for 1999 and 2000 (the most
recent years for which analyzed data readily
are available) for 13 off-campus retail
businesses in the university neighborhood
show retail grew by about 7 percent
"This is by far the No. 1 student-oriented
bar location," says Steve Nicholas, new
co-owner of the Beer Barrel with his halfbrother,
Scott Holmes. The two say they're
"ecstatic" to be leasing a business in a prime
location, which they eventually may buy.
Holmes, 37, is an entrepreneur with
one successful national business (providing
security gates and phones) already on his
resume, and with years of experience
working in all facets of restaurants and
bars. Nicholas, 29, a 1996 UNR graduate
in political science, teaches history at
North Valley's High School but has a
background firmly established at the Beer
Barrel: he both patronized and worked at
the little bar as a student.
He and Holmes see the Beer Barrel and
the cafe they intend to open next-door as
surefire successes if managed correctly,
given the proximity to campus and the
burgeoning university growth. They have
spent the summer remodeling the 900-
square-foot bar with the sweat of their
own brows, and plan to refurbish the similar-
sized cafe area.
"We're getting it back to what it used to
be," Nicholas says of the Beer Barrel. "A
very traditional college-student hangout."
"The 'sludge' will be kept to a minimum,"
Holmes adds, referring to the
grime that often has coated the floor of the
funky establishment. "Sludge is a trademark
of the Beer Barrel.We'll try to clean
it up without changing it."
Graffiti another tradition will be
moderated, as the walls periodically will be
repainted in UNR's silver and blue colors,
but marker pens will be handed to patrons
to contribute fresh taggings, Holmes says.
He and Nicholas hope to sponsor a
"Bar Olympics" among fraternities and
other student groups, competing in pool,
shuffleboard and darts. But the planned
cafe/sandwich shop as yet unnamed
will cater not to the student bar crowd
but the "morning-afternoon" crowd,
Holmes says. "A place to have lunch with
your professor."
The Record Street Cafe, meanwhile
which opened on June 4 and hurried to
complete remodeling to coincide with the
beginning of fall semester will serve "a
medley of diverse clientele," says co-owner
and chef Greg Callender.
"It's for anyone from graduate students
to professors to people who work
construction locally, and of course the
College of Agriculture, and government
workers from Valley Road offices,"
Callender says. "I have the Washoe
County Schools administration building
next door, and the College of Agriculture
across the street, and the SAE fraternity
house is behind me."
The cafe, at 945 Record St., is tucked
along a short, hidden street between Evans
Avenue and East Ninth Street, next to
railroad tracks that add to the building's
character. "A train comes by about 8:30 or
so in the morning, and again during afternoon
happy hour between 5:20 and 5:40,"
Callender says. "The conductor will wave
at you. The train lasts about five minutes.
It's a little bit loud, but it's one of the characteristics
of the building."
The brick and wood structure, containing
1,900 square feet of floor space, was
built in the 1930s as a Western Pacific
Railroad maintenance building, Callender
says. Later, it housed a hardwood flooring
company, but was vacant for more than a
decade before the cafe opened. Reno
lawyer Fred Atcheson owns the building,
and is part-owner of the corporation that
owns the cafe, along with Callender and
Atcheson's son, Chris. Daughter Zoe
Atcheson is managing the bistro.
Students can take advantage of the
cafe's wireless access for laptop computers.
The cafe may occasionally feature lowdecibel
live music to not disturb the
residential neighborhood.
Callender, 35, previously worked in
restaurants in California, Oregon and
Tennessee, including at a French restaurant
in Knoxville, home of the University
of Tennessee. He hopes UNR develops a
college town.
"When I was in Knoxville, everything
was right down the strip, to where the kids
didn't have to drive, in an easily walkable
area where they could get food, or have fun
or entertainment."
That would suit Andrew Zutshi just
fine. His SAE fraternity house is a stone's
throw from the Record Street Cafe.
"I'd like to see a restaurant you go and
have food at and relax, do your homework
outdoors," Zutshi says. "The Pub and Sub
is like that, but you need more than one for
a campus with 14,000 students."
With UNR's population and size
growing, with Walgreens' opening and
the emergence of businesses such as the
Record Street Cafe a college
town seems to be on Reno's horizon,
Zutshi says.
"It's slowly going to come to that.We're
taking a step in the right direction."
