The Little House that Could or Couldn’t Anymore?
At one point, while we looked into the media and City Council fawned over Jacobs Entertainment expansion in downtown Reno, we noticed an Instagram post heralding the continued existence of a little house, in the middle of now bulldozed motels turned into parking lots or staging grounds for possibly out of place Burning Man art.
“Giant shout out to the owner of this cute Lil gal, one of the last remaining actual houses in downtown. 7 motels torn down around it. It now stands completely alone,” the Instagram post cheered on to the resistance. “The owner is asking 5 million, refuses to negotiate, the demolition guy working next door said. Pretty hilarious stuff. It's for lease, too. If I had a shotgun and a rocking chair i'd take it. Stay off my lawn, Jacobs Bullshit Gentrification Co….” it went on, none of which we could verify ourselves.
With the help of an in town activist who knows his way around public information websites, a few months ago, though, we saw that there was an official letter with an option to sell the “cute lil’ gal” to a Jacobs Entertainment related company called Reno Property Manager LLC. Several days ago, wanting to reinvestigate the matter, we found the document listing the option to sell was no longer on the Washoe County Assessor’s Office website.
We called someone in the office who said it’s unheard of for a document to be on the website and then removed. There are mysteries from time to time. What is this one about?
Our Town Reno gets criticized for our style of reporting which includes citizen’s contributions, giving voice to just one person who is struggling as the basis of a micro story, pointing to signs or trends we find worrisome, or taking a picture and asking people what they think of it. This is also crowdsourcing, as people collectively usually know much more than any single reporter would. It’s also raising potential problems in our community, and sometimes not knowing the answer, but at least indicating to others something fishy might be taking place.