‘A Little West of Center’

Today’s RGJ reported that that the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority is changing their marketing slogan from "America’s Adventure Place" to “A Little West of Center”.  See Reno-area tourism agency to change marketing slogan

What do you think of the new slogan?  I think it’s sort of cool.  A little intriguing.  Perhaps causes one to take a moment to think about what it means exactly.  Ultimately the goal is to drive tourism to the Reno-Sparks area, which the story above reports has dropped for eleven years.

Thoughts?

78 comments

  1. Sully

    Not sure why they need a new slogan, the old one (biggest little city) works fine for me. They just need to live up to it!

  2. Tom

    Sully, I agree with you. That old slogan has historical value and it is known nationally. Why toss it? Instead, give it meaning: the amenities of a big-time vacation destination city handily available in a smaller community. That is a matter of selling the amenities, not changing a slogan.

    Reno’s key assets are its history and its independent culture, together with natural beauty and outdoor activities in the region.

    A regional campaign doesn’t have to focus on Virginia Street, so it doesn’t have to rise or fall depending upon updating the appearance of the downtown area–although that surely would help.

  3. Catherine

    My thought is “What the heck does that even mean?”

  4. billddrummer

    To CL,

    I posted on this back in December when the Montage was on its way back to Corus Bank–namely, that the people who would be expected to move into those spaces are precisely the ones who don’t look at Reno as a viable living or working alternative. I’m aware of several recent UNR grads who gladly moved to the Bay Area, Oregon, Phoenix and Seattle because of better career opportunities and cultural options.

    As I posted about my oldest daughter, she is now a freshman at NYU in the Stern School of Business. Many of her friends moved out of state to attend school as well, and looked at UNR as a last resort if they weren’t accepted elsewhere.

    Now, I think UNR is a good school. But we don’t promote the university and its advantages to locals, so why would out of towners want to explore it?

    As far as the phrase, the mayor killed it. Too bad it wasn’t anchored to anything that defines the region.

    Perhaps more money will help. But I doubt it.

  5. longerwalk

    Can Reno even sustain more ‘cultural’ options with the size and make-up of its population? The symphony seems a miracle to me, along with the 2 well-run youth symphonies.

    Mostly, would someone point to a similar sized city and what is sustained there–considering the income level?

    I personally think regional improvement is about education, and an abiding interest in parents in seeing their children get that education, so higher paying businesses and careers have a fighting chance. It’s not always about money for education, BTW, but taking advantage of what’s there, IMHO.

  6. david

    “Most schools are good.”

    What planet are you on????

    “The worst overall grade came in education, with an F for the second report card in a row. The state ranked 45th in spending per student, 46th in teacher-to-student ratio and 50th in high school dropout rate.”

    from http://www.lvrj.com/news/37701344.html

    BTW I received my undergrad from CU-Boulder…. Reno is no Boulder.

  7. skeptical

    David,
    “BTW I received my undergrad from CU-Boulder…. Reno is no Boulder.” Maybe you didn’t mean it to sound so, but to me it comes off a bit arrogant and harsh.

    I, too, graduated from CU Boulder. It’s a great school, but it ain’t paradise. I remember the vegan kids in the BMW’s, who thought they were saving the planet and superior to everyone around them. I don’t miss that about Boulder. I also don’t miss the million dollar, roach infested housing — well, at least the stuff I could afford to rent as a student. Maybe your were a bit more privileged, and your Boulder was perhaps more comfortable than mine. Anyway, the last I checked, housing is about quadruple what it was when I graduated. Hope that doesn’t give away my age too easily. Bottom line is that they haven’t had any reductions in the bloated prices there.

    I didn’t go to Reno schools, but my wife did. She is a Registered Nurse. Her best friends (all classmates from Reno) have an assortment of PhD’s and graduate degrees from various schools throughout the country. At the end of the day one’s education is roughly correlated with one’s individual effort, IMHO. That notwithstanding, I hear what you say about Nevada schools, and it does make me worry. I hope for Nevada’s sake that things can be turned around. It probably won’t happen without higher taxes, which nobody seems to want.

    And, so maybe, we arrive upon a point. What Reno has on Boulder is the people. I love how friendly people are in Reno. They aren’t arrogant. They try to help you however they can. They don’t even realize how friendly they are. I’ve been around the world, and people here are just, plain friendly. At least more so than Boulder, and many other places where I’ve lived. But that’s just my opinion.

    Reno could definitely improve. I hope it does, and plan to do my part to help it. But, if Reno is that horrible for you, why are you wasting your time on this blog? Do you even live in Reno? Maybe, well, maybe you should just move back to Boulder…

  8. Sully

    The fact Nevada spends about $35 per student a year less than Colorado on secondary education, doesn’t really make a hugh point david.

    Alaska spends far more, but I don’t see people flocking there because of the education system.

    Additionally, Reno is no Boulder, its also no Las Vegas. I for one give thanks for that. 🙂

  9. John Rusin

    Skeptical, anecdotal evidence about the schools here is just that. The facts are (sorry) they are poor here…I spoke recently at one school and could not believe its condition. Worse, I don’t see any improvement…there is actually voter hostility toward funding schools here, something I have not seen in all the other areas I’ve lived (I’m a hometowner who moved back here 9 years ago).

    As long as education here is not a priority, we’ll continue to be a low-wage magnet, and that spells doom for any high end development. This is a place that actually gives STAR bonds to big box stores that pay low wages…their employees can’t buy and repair our real estate market. Idiocy.

    And I’ve never believed the “people are friendler there” theory. I’ve lived in many states and people are basically the same everywhere, in my experience. If you approach them in a positive manner, which you probably didn’t do in Boulder since you didn’t like it there, they will respond in kind. The friendliest people I’ve known were in the Bay Area, NYC, and here.

  10. Tom

    I have done a fair amount of high school volunteer work with teens in Los Angeles, and I am not persuaded that spending more on schools necessarily improves student performance. It probably doesn’t hurt performance, but it doesn’t automatically help it, either.
    Schools everywhere merely reflect the demographics of their attendance districts. Galena High, for example, seems to graduate almost everyone and a very high percentage go on to college. The same goes for certain Los Angeles Unified high schools in the west Valley and in west Los Angeles. Inner city schools everywhere have more obstacles to successful learning– not just in Reno. Family values regarding educational achievement, single parent families with the one parent working sometimes two jobs, home environment and study facilities, crowded multiple generation family living units, health and nutrition within the family unit, peer attitudes toward learning, all either promote or retard the encouragement of learning. Until those factors are changed, throwing more money into schools is not a cure-all.

    I believe you could spend whatever you want on schools, but without changing the mix of these other factors, very little would change regarding student success rates. So it isn’t necessarily the fault of a particular school as an institution, or that a community’s schools are generally “bad” in comparison to others, it is just that many are rowing against a much stronger upstream current than others. As a result, their results statistically speaking will compare poorly with others.

  11. John Newell

    I have two children in middle school in Washoe County. We purposefully picked an area in Washoe County with better than average schools (for Washoe County, that is). Even so, I am not very impressed with the schools, but not because they are underfunded. As Tom indicated, LA is a great example that throwing money at the problem is not a panacea. The elementary school my children attended was much better funded and equipped than the small elementary school in the Ozarks that I attended as a child, but I dare say I think my education was better (and that was in a small hillbilly town that had fewer than 1500 residents). The difference was the educational standards, and I don’t mean the overly artificial (and likely ultimately unworkable) standards of No Child Left Behind. Each grade level had educational standards that had to be met before the student progressed, and if the student failed to meet those standards, then the student was left behind. We need real educational standards, and teachers capable of teaching to them.

    However, that being said, my perception is that Washoe County schools (and Northern Nevada schools in general) are not as bad as the numbers suggest. Consider this as an anecdote that may be illustrative. Before law school, I taught writing at WNC (then WNCC) in Carson City. Generally speaking, the freshmen students were competent in writing straight out of high school, and I cannot recall having a student in a developmental (remedial) writing class who told me he/she had been in honors English in high school. Conversely, during law school, I taught at Sierra College in Rocklin, CA, and every semester I had 3~4 students in my developmental writing classes who did not understand why they were in a “remedial” class when they had been in honors high school English in the Rocklin Unified School District. However, as soon as I read such a student’s first essay, it invariably was obvious to me why he/she had tested into developmental writing. The very well funded school district (with a decent graduation rate and good test scores) put an emphasis on writing as expression, not as a skill, and thereby left many of their better students incompetent to write an essay well enough to meet even the minimal college writing level. This was very different from my experience teaching students who came from Northern Nevada high schools.

    Not to belabor the point, but Sierra College at that time offered as almost as many developmental writing classes each semester as they offered English 1A (the normal freshman level first writing class). Most of the incoming freshmen at Sierra College were straight from the Rocklin Unified School District, which as I indicated above, is well funded. Take from this what you will.

    Finally, as stated by others above, there are other factors involved in education other than just the schools. One, a student who wants to learn will often do better than one who does not even in the same school setting. Two, the attitudes of a student’s parents and family toward education have a great impact on the successfulness of that education. If parents value education, then often their children will value it as well. And finally, the value placed on education in the culture of the area is important as well. Reno/Sparks has been largely a blue-collar/working class area for a long time, and the value of education, particularly to prepare students for higher education, is just not as great as it may be in other areas. If the culture embraced education more, then we might have better schools, even without spending more money.

  12. CommercialLender

    John Newell articulately answered the multi-billion dollar, 4-5 decade old problem with your sentence: “the attitudes of a student’s parents and family toward education have a great impact on the successfulness of that education. If parents value education, then often their children will value it as well.”

    No, it is not more money to teachers’ unions (tried that in CA for decades). No, it is not higher taxes (tried that in many states for decades). It is familial and personal responsibility and ambition. This is exactly why homes cost more in areas with good schools: parents who value their kids’ education above their own lifestyle and their own ‘toys’ will pay more to live in those neighborhoods. As a result, generally their kids grow up in an environment and among peers where higher education is desired not shunned and a relatively higher socio-economic demographic is sought after through hard work. The parents in many of these same relatively higher cost neighborhoods in better school districts typically are not the ones with a jacked up pickup truck with $3,000 rims and expensive exhaust system and 2 jet skis on a trailer in the side yard.

    Before you roll your eyes or call “elitist, arrogant” think that this topic relates to real estate in the bubble. The materialistic desires of far too many homebuyers put them at odds with their kids’ educational best interests and even with sound financial sense. How many housing decisions were made wanting the nicest or biggest house a buyer could afford, rather than the best schools they could afford? How many foreclosures are now in the pipeline due to the homebuyer succumbing to materialistic desires for excessive toys and their refusal to allow that maybe, just maybe they can’t actually afford everything they want?

    How does Reno / Sparks fit in both now and into any recovery? Well, John Rusin said it above well: “As long as education here is not a priority, we’ll continue to be a low-wage magnet, and that spells doom for any high end development. This is a place that actually gives STAR bonds to big box stores that pay low wages…their employees can’t buy and repair our real estate market. Idiocy.”

  13. John Newell

    CommercialLender,

    I agree with you completely, so let people call me “elitist” and “arrogant” as well. But I want to add that I think some of the people who bought the bigger and better houses they could not really afford did so because they wanted good schools and a nice house for their children. My wife and I faced that choice in 2006, but we chickened out of the five year interest only voodoo loan and rented a house instead. We could have afforded to buy a house in a less desirable neighborhood, but we decided that renting a house in a good area was a better decision for our children than buying a house in a less desirable neighborhood.

  14. Schoolie

    I’d love to hear from the collective what are the best schools in Reno. Mike, is it relevant enough for it’s own thread? Sure does seem to have interest. What’s more important to a young family making a real estate decision than quality of the neighborhood schools?

    I’ve asked RE Agents, and they are loath to give an opinion — must have been several lawsuits in the past.

    It’s my understanding that Reno High and Galena are the two best high schools in the area, and their respective primary schools are also better than their peers. Any dissenters? Any private school options that are worth the cash?

    I’ve looked at the websites that supposedly rate schools, and they are devoid of much useful info.

    I plan to move to Reno next year from outside the area, and the single issue that gives me pause is the quality of schools for my two primary school sons. FWIW.

  15. david

    “I want to add that I think some of the people who bought the bigger and better houses they could not really afford did so because they” also lacked a decent education.

  16. John Newell

    Part of the problem with ranking schools is that some factors I find important you may not, and vice versa. However, here are my (unscientific) impressions.

    Schools in Galena are generally considered good schools, and I have heard a lot of positives about Galena High School. Furthermore, the schools in Galena seem to have a good deal of parental support. I would like to be living in Galena when my daughter hits highs school age, but life is full of compromises, and one of mine is that we live in Sparks near my in-laws. See below for Sparks.

    I don’t know about Reno High. The academics may be okay, but it does not leap to my mind when people ask about good schools.

    I have heard both good and bad about Damonte Ranch High School, but I don’t know anything about the feeder schools. The Damonte Ranch area is mainly newer developments, and was considered relatively affluent.

    Hug and Wooster have poor reputations, as do their feeder schools.

    McQueen has a solid reputation, as far as I know. People I know whose children attend the school seem to really like it. I don’t know anything about the feeder schools.

    Sparks as a city often has a bad, and somewhat undeserved, reputation (depending on what part of Sparks is at issue) around the area, but Reed High School is considered to be a solid school academically, and it has good parental support. Reed is best known for sports, which may or may not be a factor for you. Mendive Jr. High (where my daughter is currently enrolled) also scores well in standardized testing and parental support. However, as I indicated above, I would rather be in Galena (for a number of reasons).
    The elementary schools in Sparks are hit and miss, and I have not heard good things about any middle school in Sparks other than Mendive. Sparks High and Spanish Springs High School both have poor reputations.

    I don’t know anything specific about the private schools, although Bishop Manogue Catholic High School is a well known school.

    Washoe County has a few charter schools as well, but the only one I know anything about is Coral Academy of Science. It is a county K-12 public charter school that focuses on college prep, especially science & math, but it is quirky and in a bad neighborhood. My 13-year-old son has attended Coral Academy for the past couple of years, and he loves it. My wife and I don’t like everything about (especially the neighborhood), but if your children aren’t interested in sports and regular school is boring them, it may be a possibility.

  17. John Newell

    Point well taken, David, but we should not minimize that many people with “decent” educations (in some cases first class educations) bought in to the housing bubble and the voodoo loans. I think we are seeing an attempt among the media and the politicians to recast the bubble as a low-income, uneducated buyer created phenomenon, but this ignores the plain facts that many well educated, “savy” homebuyers and investors also fell “victim” to the housing bubble.

  18. Reno Navy Guy

    How about “Sun, Sand and Snow”, “Americas Playground”, “It happens in Reno.” or “Reno, The best of the West”.

  19. Reno Navy Guy

    “West of Center” does nothing for me, I’m unsure about how others feel about it. I agree, we need to rapidly improve downtown area buildings/blight in order to attract more tourists. “West of Center” does nothing for me and I doubt it would help bring more tourists to Reno. We need a new Tagline that catches everyones attention. Let’s focus on what Reno and the surrounding area is best known for in developing a new tagline, i.e. Casinos/Gaming, Sierras, Nightlife, Snow and the Desert.

  20. Reno Navy Guy

    Revised Comments: “West of Center” does nothing for me, I’m unsure about how others feel about it. I agree, we need to rapidly improve downtown area buildings and eliminate blight in order to attract more tourists. I doubt that “West of Center” would help bring more tourists to Reno. We need a new Tagline that catches everyones attention. Let’s focus on what Reno and the surrounding area is best known for in developing a new tagline, i.e. The Casinos/Gaming, Entertainment, Reno 911 in a good way, Nightlife, Sierras, Snow and the Desert.

  21. billddrummer

    What’s wrong with “Biggest Little City in the World”?

  22. Reno Navy Guy

    I like “Americas Biggest Little Playground” for the new tagline. It covers the Reno, Sparks, Tahoe region. Reno needs to become a mecca for Technology, Video gaming, Nightlife activities, Unique restuarants, and Sporting activities. This includes White water rafting, Water parks, Desert activities, Snow trips, Technology convention hub, Nightclub variety, Unique restuarants, Motor Vehicle convention hub to expand hot august nights and street vibrations, a master video gaming hub for the younger generation and retain well maintained gambling resorts for the older generation.

  23. FutureRenoHomebuyer

    Why Live in Reno??

    I realize this is a pretty old thread, but scanning recent discussions, there didn’t seem to be alot of better places to discuss the above. It’s a question that I’m currently struggling with.

    My wife grew up in Reno. I’ve always liked Reno. I think it’s a great little town.

    Without getting into alot of personal details, I live overseas, and plan to return to the States this year and plant for the next 10-20 years, so my boys can live a full, stable life as they progress through grade/high school.

    This blog has given me a comprehensive education about all things Reno. It has been an invaluable resource. And I have to tell you, right now I am very conflicted regarding whether I should choose Reno as our homebase for the indefinite future. If I did not have kids, it’d probably be a slam dunk, but I want them to grow up in a place where, well, where it’d be a great place to grow up.

    Back to the matter at hand, “why would someone want to live in Reno?” My answers are:
    1) Proximity to Lake Tahoe
    2) UNR (I think it’s a good school, and might want to go back for some additional degrees/certifications). It’s also pretty cheap, all things considered.
    3) Friendly people. I’ve always had good experiences with Reno-ites whenever I’ve visited there.
    4) Good values in real estate for an informed buyer.

    Detractors?:
    1) Quality of schooling. I rationalize that I’ve located a few primary schools (Hunsberger, Pine, Gomm, Caughlin Ranch) and a few high schools (Reno, Galena) that are fine schools. Still, that last place ranking for NV schools in a recent national survey combined with the upcoming 25+% cuts scare the heck out of me.
    2) Economic prospects/jobs
    3) Poor budgetary condition of Nevada and Washoe County
    4) Decaying downtown core

    OBTW, my wife is a nurse, and I’ll have a good pension to add to any employment I can obtain in Reno. That said, I’d like to get a rewarding job. Working at Home Depot or Walmart (if such jobs are even available) wouldn’t qualify.

    Adding to the detractors is my nagging concern that it might be 20 years before Reno turns around. Population decreases worry me. California Indian casinos are suctioning off Reno’s #1 industry. Do I want to move to a place that is looking at 10+yrs of possible bad luck?

    So, this indulgent soliloquy is meant partially to help me sort out what I should do, and hopefully to spur response. Maybe you can push me over the edge, one way or the other. But right now, poss jobs in DC (would hate the traffic), or Nebraska (never ate much corn, but great schools) are beginning to compete with my dream of living in Reno… But one thing they don’t have that Reno does? The Sierra Nevada mountain range.

    Happy to listen to any response. Reno seems to have so much promise and potential, but I must wonder if that potential will ever be realized.

  24. GrandWazoo

    I would suggest you expand your search to include the Pacific Northwest. Areas of Oregon and Washington have many of the same features of northwest Nevada without some of the downsides.

  25. Steve Watts

    FureRenoHomebuyer,
    I would revisit #3 and #4 on your “pro” list. The old adage that “people are friendlier there” is really an assumption. I myself find location doesn’t really determine how “friendly” people are. If you show a positive attitude and friendliness anywhere, you’ll get it in return, at least in my experience.
    And no, I don’t think prices are down to where they should be. Also consider, taxes may be low for businesses here but not so much for individuals. The last legislature boosted plenty of fees, property taxes are pretty high, and with the huge state deficit (a worse situation than California per capita) more hikes are coming. We’re not really a low tax state, imo.

  26. RB

    Nevada’s ranking for education is dead last for one reason alone — Clark County. End of story. I went to elementary, middle and high school in Marin County, CA and I was still behind the curve mathematically in college level course at UNR. You can get a great eduction in Reno despite what some generic ranking system may suggest.

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