Every day Tom Outland talks to real estate developers, retailers, city officials and casino owners about redeveloping downtown Reno.
Essentially, he says, his job is to promote the pleasures of city living.
And there's the rub.
"Urban living is a hard sell to westerners," says Outland, a consultant with the City of Reno's Redevelopment Agency.
That's only part of the reason Reno's downtown redevelopment has been slow going.
But recreating the center of town may be more important than ever now that the Thunder Valley Casino in northern California has opened its doors.
"This has to be successful," says Outland What Outland envisions is an accessible, easy-to-walk downtown full of shopping, dining and entertainment possibilities a community gathering place, he calls it.
A little like New York City's SoHo, Boston's Faneiul Hall or San Francisco's Union Square.
Or, more comparably, like new redevelopment in San Jose, Calif., and Easton, Ohio, adjacent to Columbus.
Reno, says Outland, has a solid start.
Plenty of people still go downtown, including 4 million tourists, 15,000 University of Nevada, Reno students, and 17 percent of the city's workforce.
Besides that, the city is already built up.
"The infrastructure is here," he says.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that much of that infrastructure is already occupied - with too many liquor stores, casinos and pawnshops.
According to Outland, $36 million in liquor is sold in northern Nevada, and $15 million of that is sold downtown.
So the liquor stores aren't going away, but he points to the city council's moratorium on liquor stores in downtown as a good start.
Then there are plenty of empty buildings that the redevelopment agency is working to fill.
Outland's first priority is finding a developer for the old Woolworth building at the corner of South Virginia and First Street, in the heart of downtown.
Outland says he is working "diligently" to find a developer or tenant for that space.
Outland, who started up Macy's at Meadowood Mall and managed the store for 17 years, says there are plenty of national, well-known retailers not represented in northern Nevada, including Williams Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, and Abercrombie & Fitch.
He also thinks there's room for an upscale grocery like Andronico's, based in California, or New York's Dean & DeLuca.
The Woolworth building is backed by an equally large, vacant space, the old J.C Penney building on Sierra Street.
Across the street from that, on the corner of First Street and Sierra, is a vacant lot ready for what the agency calls multiuse space - retail and restaurants on the bottom and residential space on the top.
But the corner, which fronts the river, once had a developer attached to it who was reportedly developing a building with street-level restaurants and condominiums with a view.
That deal apparently fell apart and the agency is once again looking for someone to develop the lot.
The lot is across the street from one of redevelopment's success stories - the Century Riverside 12 Theatre, which Outland says is an essential entertainment anchor for any downtown.
Down the street is another success story, Cavanaugh's Furniture Gallery, says Outland.
And around the corner is Beaujolais Bistro restaurant.
The other priority for Outland is the downtown events center, near the National Bowling Stadium, another redevelopment effort, as well as what he calls the entertainment corridor surrounding it.
All of that, says Outland, is needed to revitalize Reno.
Otherwise, the rest of the world, which knows less about northern Nevada than westerners know about city living, won't keep coming.
"Most New Yorkers think Reno is a suburb of Vegas," said Outland.
"We've lost our brand identity."
