Elevation Entertainment, a California-based real estate development firm, has submitted proposals to the city of Reno for a new hotel-casino project, named Firecreek Crossing Resort-Casino, which would represent the first ground-up casino project for the city in over 20 years.
The proposed casino would be located in one of the busiest areas of the city, on the corner of South Virginia Street and Kietzke Lane, very close to the Reno convention center. According to the filings, the development would also include dining options, a public park and a beer garden.
Elevation is known for building and overhauling small-scale hotels, and it has built two card rooms in California, the Seven Mile Casino in Chula Vista as well as Sacramento’s Stones Gambling Hall.
In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Elevation CEO Ryan Stone said the new project “is going to be a complete game changer for entertainment in Reno. Reno deserves it and needs it, and when people see the design and how much detail we put into making this great, people are going to be excited.”
According to Stone, Elevation first hatched the idea to expand into Nevada after the Covid-19 pandemic forced business closures in California. He noted that “we also liked Nevada’s pro-business approach while California had a different approach.”
Interestingly, this is not the first time a company has proposed to build a casino on the same site—in 2016, Station Casinos bought the lot and proposed a 90,000 square-foot casino with a 21,000 square-foot gaming floor and other amenities.
However, Covid struck them down as well, and even though the company pledged to move forward with the project, the land was eventually sold to Elevation. The sale has not been finalized, but Stone confirmed that the company is contractually bound to purchase the plot.
Stone told the RGJ that “it took two years to put all the pieces together. That’s the reality. It’s a complicated deal with a lot of moving parts but we’re good at complicated deals.”
One challenging aspect to the deal is that it involves two separate plots—the 7.76 acres sold by Station as well as a 12-acre plot nearby. The size of the land will allow Elevation to offer more rooms, which was a big sticking point for Station’s previous proposal.
John Farahi, CEO of Reno’s Atlantis Casino Resort, said in 2016 that he felt Station should “bring a project that brings in more tourism and enlarges the pie, which helps the whole community.”
Firecreek Crossing is slated to offer 201 rooms and 48 suites, with 1,250 slots, 40-plus tables and a sportsbook.
An attorney for the project, Garrett Gordon, told the RGJ that he feels confident the city will approve the casino, because of the taxes it would generate for an otherwise vacant area.
Gordon said that approval “shouldn’t be controversial,” because if you look at the site as it stands now, “there’s needles and there’s garbage there. It has campaign signs that everyone is sick of looking at.”
