Every Tuesday evening this year, two things have happened at the same spot in downtown Reno without anyone organizing them together. Riders roll in for Bike Night at Believe Plaza, and Family Soup Mutual Aid sets up nearby to feed anyone who's hungry. Neither event charges admission. Neither needs a permit fee that most nonprofits could afford twice. They just happen, week after week, on public land next to the Truckee River, under the shadow of the Space Whale sculpture that's become as much a downtown landmark as the arch itself.

For about six weeks this summer, that arrangement was almost gone. Not because the city decided to redevelop the plaza. Because one longtime business owner asked to lease it for a dollar a year, and the city's own review board voted to send the idea further down the approval line before most residents had a chance to weigh in.

The Offer on the Table

On May 21, Kurt Stitser, co-owner of The Eddy, sent an unsolicited letter of intent to City Manager Jackie Bryant. The Eddy has run a shipping-container bar on Sierra Street for a decade, building a following through a food truck program and a regular events calendar. Stitser's letter asked for a five-year lease at $1.00 a year, with an option to extend and eventually purchase, covering two parcels: the city-owned plaza at 30 North Virginia Street, which most residents know as Believe Plaza, and an adjacent Redevelopment Agency parcel on South Center Street that currently sits as a surface parking lot.

Stitser said the timing was driven entirely by the coming Sierra Street Bridge replacement, a project expected to start construction in April 2027. He worried the years of construction traffic would kill his current location's business, and his lease there was already coming up for renewal.

The letter of intent promised the plaza would stay publicly accessible. It said the Believe sculpture and the Space Whale would remain. It listed protections for community events, river access, and the Tahoe-Pyramid Bike Path. On paper, it read like an upgrade.

What the Vote Actually Showed

The proposal landed on the June 1 agenda for the Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board. Stitser sits on that board. He recused himself from the vote itself, but stayed at the table through the presentation and discussion, workshopping his own pitch with the colleagues who would decide its fate. The board voted 4-3 to forward the proposal to the Redevelopment Agency for further review, not approval. Board members Mike Van Houten, Colin Robertson, and Nettie Oliverio voted no, each arguing the plaza needed to stay public.

What the vote exposed had less to do with beer gardens than with process. City Plaza itself, the formal name for Believe Plaza, isn't even on Reno's approved list of properties available for private lease or sale. The adjacent RDA parking lot is on that list, but it's tagged for "hold," meaning the city has already decided not to dispose of it right now. A proposal covering land the city hadn't offered up somehow reached a vote anyway, and that's what pulled council members into the fight. At the following city council meeting, Naomi Duerr, Meghan Ebert, and Mayor Schieve all raised concerns about how an unsolicited letter like this could move through the process at all, and Duerr asked staff to bring back a policy review.

The Website That Didn't Help

Once the backlash started, it moved fast. Residents pointed out the plaza already hosts a steady rotation of free programming and questioned why a business owner with a board seat needed to reinvent it. Reddit threads dug into code compliance questions. Someone spray-painted a message on the side of The Eddy's shipping containers, and a local artist was hired to paint over it within the same week.

On June 5, Stitser and his co-owner Phil Buckheart released a statement acknowledging they hadn't brought the community into the conversation early enough, and opened a public feedback form. Three weeks later, on June 27, they launched a standalone website framing the proposal as a series of myths versus facts, pointing to Millennium Park in Chicago and Bryant Park in New York as examples of privately managed public spaces that stayed open to everyone. The comparison didn't land the way they hoped. Reno isn't Chicago, and Believe Plaza wasn't struggling to fill a calendar. It already had one.

Withdrawal, Not Resolution

On July 1, at 12:57 p.m., Stitser formally withdrew the letter of intent, according to a memorandum from City Manager Jackie Bryant. In a joint statement, he and Buckheart said procedural and legal considerations had surfaced that needed to be addressed before anything like this could move forward. They pointed back to a decade of hosting nonprofits and food truck operators downtown, and said their commitment to the district hadn't changed.

What didn't get resolved is the underlying problem Stitser raised in the first place. The Sierra Street Bridge project is still coming in 2027, his current lease is still expiring, and Bryant confirmed the RDA parking lot parcel next door isn't bound by the same restrictions that sank the plaza portion of the deal. Stitser can resubmit a narrower letter of intent for just that parcel, and it would go back through the same advisory board for review. The plaza itself is safe for now. The block around it is still an open question.

What Was Actually Happening at the Plaza the Whole Time

Part of what made the proposal land so badly is that Believe Plaza wasn't sitting empty waiting for someone to activate it. It already runs on a rhythm most downtown residents could recite from memory:

• Bike Night every Tuesday
• Family Soup Mutual Aid every Tuesday, feeding anyone who shows up
• A rotating weekly food truck schedule
• Dancing on the River during Artown, including this year's America 250 programming
• Large civic gatherings that draw thousands, from marches to memorials, all held on land nobody has to pay to use

That last point is the one that got lost in the debate over foot traffic and commercial viability. A plaza that already hosts everything from a Tuesday bike meetup to citywide gatherings isn't an underused asset. It's doing exactly what a downtown square is supposed to do.

The Other Downtown Story This Summer

A few blocks away, a different kind of downtown story has been playing out at a slower pace than advertised. The old Harrah's site, now branded Revival, is being redeveloped by Ahlquist LLC with ground-floor hospitality run by Las Vegas-based Fine Entertainment. The plan is genuinely large: 1.2 million square feet across two city blocks, with 282 market-rate apartments and 390 hotel rooms planned alongside office and retail space.

The Mint opened last fall as a temporary cocktail bar in the old Starbucks space, and it's been running around the clock since. The two anchor venues, PKWY Tavern with its bowling alley and 400-beer list, and the steak-focused BLVD Grille, were originally supposed to open by the end of the first quarter of 2026. As of the most recent local reporting this August, both are still described as queued to open rather than open. The block is further along than it was a year ago, but the timeline has slipped well past what was promised when the renderings first went up.

Put the two stories next to each other and a pattern shows up that neither headline captured on its own. The plaza that almost got leased away for a dollar a year was already carrying more weekly foot traffic through free programming than the heavily funded private development still waiting on its anchor tenants. Downtown Reno's most reliably active square this summer wasn't the one under construction. It was the one that nearly changed hands before most residents even knew it was on the table.

What to Watch This Fall

A few threads from this summer are still loose enough to matter through the rest of the year:

• Whether Stitser resubmits a narrower letter of intent for just the RDA parking lot parcel, and what the advisory board says the second time around
• Whether PKWY Tavern and BLVD Grille actually open before the end of the year, given how far the original Q1 2026 target has already slipped
• The monthly Riverwalk Wine Walk, hosted by the Riverwalk Merchants Association, with the remaining 2026 dates landing on September 19, October 17, and November 21
• Any movement on the Sierra Street Bridge replacement timeline, since that 2027 start date is the reason this entire debate started

Believe Plaza isn't going anywhere this year. But the pressure that produced this proposal, an aging lease, a construction project bearing down on a small business, a city process that let an unsolicited offer travel further than it should have, hasn't gone anywhere either. Downtown residents just found out how quickly a familiar corner of their own neighborhood can end up on a city agenda without their input. That's worth remembering the next time a quiet Tuesday feels like it will always be a quiet Tuesday.

If you're watching how downtown Reno keeps changing shape and want a clear-eyed read on what it means for property here, Shelby Smith NV is a good person to talk to. Let's Connect.