Of the 30 some thousand new housing units we are projected to need over the next 20 years, the vast majority will be build in the North Valleys. There is a Special Session of the Reno City Council at 6 PM Tuesday to start the discussion on what the impacts will be. Go in person, watch on Charter channel 194, or watch online. This is an important meeting.
Where is development already approved or pending? Check out this MAP from the Regional Planning agency. Then imagine the Spaghetti Bowl at 8 AM in 2 years until RTC and NDOT catch up. Kids bussed to the nearest available schools with capacity.
Welcome to the boom town.
REreno 
Steve Jobs said:
“Welcome to the boom town.”
Well, maybe.
If many of these new jobs being created require people with true technical disciplines – engineering, finance, design – then the corresponding salaries will definitely help lift the region and create a true demand for more quality homes and all the things that go with them. With money to spend these people will really contribute to the region’s economy.
If, on the other hand, many of the jobs created are like many of the jobs already here – essentially unskilled blue collar jobs with low salaries, and this includes most of the current and future workers at the Gigafactory – as the cost of living continues to rise here these new employees will feel constantly squeezed. They will be unable to afford all these new homes yet to be built, and will have little extra money to contribute to the local economy. If that becomes the case, then it is “Welcome to the factory town”. I’ve lived in a factory town and I’ve lived in a boom town and I can assure you they are not the same.
Tesla seems to be a constant in much of the talk about the Reno region becoming a boom town. Let’s be clear that Tesla’s engineering and finance operations are not coming to Reno. Let’s also be clear that Tesla continues to lose money building a high margin low volume car. To suggest that they will suddenly hit their financial stride building a low margin high volume car is inconsistant with the history of the automobile industry.
geopower said:
Watching the video and while it’s totally reasonable for residents to ask the city for better services, amazing the disconnect between lifestyle choices and service expectations. You can’t have big lot single family residences with low sale prices, low property taxes and expect to receive a service like light rail or aggressive flood protection in a closed basin.
nevadafan said:
Steve Jobs. Isn’t that the point of the gigafactory? To produce a battery at scale which significantly reduces the cost of the car? And to say engineering isn’t included in hiring is false. I have two friends that work at the factory. One for Panasonic and the other for Tesla. Both are engineers. The number of engineers will increase when the drive train facility is complete. But this isn’t R&D, and it’s not product dev. The factory was built for a specific purpose and it doesn’t require the engineering presence those departments would.
andypandy said:
We can’t afford car dependent development. Some things we need to reign in sprawl: urban growth boundary, elimination of RTC fees for infill, increasing RTC fees for sprawl, better transit, increased property tax for sprawl (to pay for the huge infrastructure they require over multiple life cycles). If we just keep building this stuff we’re not going to be able to afford anything else.
Paul said:
There’s an urban growth boundary to the east called the Virginia Range and one to the west called the Sierras. Those are the only growth boundaries that will ever be accepted by the powers-that-be in this region, and I think much to the detriment of quality of life here.
As for development in the North Valleys, there’s always a possible difference between where Washoe County / Reno zones for high density SSB’s (usually based on requests from politically connected landowners) and where people actually want to live.
To the extent that blue collar employment growth is increasingly focused in the TRIC / Tesla corridor, it seems the most logical new developments would be middle class, high density multi-family projects in East Sparks and West Fernley with easy I-80 access. That’s a locational fit for new jobs and affordable to the median TRIC wage scale. Its not clear that most new TRIC jobs even put their workers in the single-family market, much less in an obtuse North Valleys location that makes for a miserable and more costly commute.
Steve Jobs said:
Paul gets it, thank you. Welcome to Factory Town.
For nevadafan, when I was working as an engineer in the largest automobile complex on earth more than a few years ago, the ratio of production/industrial engineers in the factory to blue collar hourly workers was probably close to 100 to 1 – one degreed engineer to every 100 hourly workers who push buttons and fly out the door after a straight eight hours. In an admittedly more technical factory like the Gigafactory I would guess the ratio might be more like 30 to one. So, given 5000 total workers (if it ever gets to that) we have 4833 hourly workers who can’t really afford to live here and maybe 166 engineers who can.
Building a low margin high volume car is not about sourcing parts (like the batteries) cheap, although that is part of it, an important part for sure. The magic is actually assembling those cars defect free as fast as you can. Tesla has zero experience doing this, and despite Musk’s vow to build a truly “lights out” (as in no people, completely automated) assembly plant for the Model Three, no car company has ever done that despite their many years of experience – a hundred years experience in the case of Ford, who invented the assembly line. There’s a huge amount of automation no doubt, but to get to the kind of production rates that Tesla needs with close to zero defects is unheard of for a company with so little experience doing so. There’s also a couple billion dollars worth of tooling to buy too, and Telsa is already highly leveraged. If their stock price drops bigly they are in trouble from a raising capital perspective.
I wish them, and everyone here and elsewhere betting on them, good luck.
REreno said:
David & David from 1986. Jeez, I’m getting old! Lyrics: So I say / I say welcome, welcome to the boomtown / Pick a habit / We got plenty to go around
Steve Jobs said:
Hilarious to be sure. In the meantime the WCSD reports a $30M shortfall, baffling all those that voted for the sales tax increase. TRIC of course, and all those shitty jobs and horrendous tax abatements, are actually in Storey County, so no joy there for public school education in Washoe County even if the state didn’t give $1.2B away to Tesla.
Welcome to Factory Town.