The Battle for Believe Plaza: Who Owns Reno’s Public Spaces?

Is Reno about to give away one of its most important public spaces?

The proposed relocation of The Eddy to Believe Plaza has ignited a heated debate across the city — and it’s about way more than just one bar.

At the center of it all is a bigger question:
Who do our public spaces actually belong to?

In this week’s Ask-Reno.com Hot Topic, we break down:

•  Why Believe Plaza was designed as a true public town square 
•  The controversial proposal for a $1/year, 20-year lease
•  Community concerns around privatization, access, and precedent 
•  The history between The Eddy and nearby residents 
•  And the creative alternatives locals are proposing instead 

From Bike Night to protests to major cultural events, Believe Plaza has become a real gathering place for Reno — not just a patch of land.

So what happens if that changes?

Is this smart adaptation during construction… or a long-term shift toward privatizing public space?

Transcript

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Have you ever like looked at a piece of public art and wondered who it's actually for? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, usually you just walk past some massive statue in the city center and it's just background. Exactly. It's just a landmark for directions. Right. But you know, if you stop and think about it, someone had to decide what that art means. Right. And even more critically, someone decides what happens to the ground beneath it. Aaron Powell Which is a question that really cuts to the mechanics of how we manage cities. I mean, we often just take public spaces totally for granted. Aaron Powell Until someone steps in and tries to change the rules. Exactly. Until someone tries to dictate who gets to be there. Aaron Ross Powell Which brings us to what we're exploring in today's deep dive. We're looking at this really fascinating, honestly, very heated urban conflict unfolding in Reno, Nevada. Aaron Powell Yeah. And we have a really diverse stack of sources for this one. Aaron Powell We do. We're pulling from local news reports from the Reno Gazette Journal, some R Trail Guides, uh a piece of street-level journalism from an independent outlet called R Town Reno. And some highly mobilized local Reddit threads, which are always interesting. Oh, definitely. And when you put all those together, you get this incredibly clear picture of a community basically colliding with the economic realities of urban development. It really is. So our mission today is to explore what happens when a city's literal 70-foot-wide symbol of hope becomes a battleground. Yeah, a battleground over gentrification, corporate expansion, and like the very definition of public space. Aaron Powell We are heading to Reno City Plaza. There's this massive steel monument there that is currently at the center of a huge debate about who gets to claim the heart of a city. And you know, to really understand why this is so explosive, we first need to look at the physical footprint of the monument itself. Aaron Powell Okay, let's unpack this. We're talking about the believe sculpture. And when I say massive, I mean this thing has gravity. It really does. It commands the space. Yeah, these are block letters that are 12 feet high, they're four feet thick, made of solid steel, and they stretch for 70 feet. And it has that very distinct, heavy, rusted hue to it. Aaron Powell Right. Which signals its origins because you know it wasn't forged in some municipal planning meeting. No, it was built for the dust and the chaos of Burning Man. Aaron Powell by artists Lori Kimpton and Jeff Schomburg, right. Exactly. They're famous for these monumental word sculptures. They've done words like mom, love, oink, ego, be, dream? Okay, wait. Oink is certainly a choice. Right. But I kind of love the playfulness of it. But I do have to ask about that transition. Because burning that art is inherently designed to be temporary. That's right. It's ephemeral. It exists in the desert and then it's gone. So how does dropping something like that, you know, permanently into a downtown concrete setting change what it is? Aaron Ross Powell Well, it forces a real psychological shift. In the desert, it's part of this temporary shared survival experience. But when a city buys it and literally bolts it to the concrete in a financial district, it becomes an institution. Aaron Powell That makes sense. But the word believe remains this open-ended command. It doesn't actually dictate what you were supposed to believe in. It functions almost like a mirror. Yes, exactly. It invites the community to fill in the blank based on their own lives. Aaron Powell And the piece itself has this deeply emotional backstory, too. If you look closely at those rusted steel letters, they're entirely covered in these intricate cutouts of birds. Right, hundreds of them. Yeah. And the sources point out that Laura Kempton added those because she was looking out a window at the exact moment her father passed away. Oh wow. Yeah. And simultaneously, this massive flock of birds flew past the glass. So it's a permanent tribute to her father. That's incredible. And at night, the whole thing lights up from within, right through those cutouts. It gives this super heavy industrial piece of steel a very delicate resonance. And its placement really amplifies that. For sure. It sits right in Reno City Plaza near the historic Virginia Street Bridge. And for locals, that specific plot of land carries so much historical weight because it used to be the site of the Makes Hotel. Right, which was this iconic part of the Reno skyline before the city demolished it in 2000. And since then, it's been a public plaza. So for over two decades, it's basically been the living room of downtown Reno. That's a good way to put it. I mean, think about a living room in a busy house. It belongs to everyone, and it holds all these conflicting activities depending on if it's three in the afternoon or midnight. And the city's calendar reflects that too. It's a 24-hour hub. Yeah, you have the official stuff like dancing on the river or Saturdays in the park. But simultaneously, it operates as a wildly popular, completely unsanctioned skate park. Exactly. Teenagers congregate there, people eat lunch there, they just exist, and it's totally free. You don't need a ticket. You don't need to buy a drink. But that prime location right on the Trekkie River makes it incredibly attractive real estate. And whenever you have an unmonetized space drawing consistent foot traffic, private interests will inevitably see a commercial opportunity. Which brings us to Kurt Stitzer. Right. So he is the owner of a local outdoor bar called the Eddie. And according to the news reports, he submitted a formal letter of intent to the city. Aaron Powell He essentially asked to lease and maybe eventually buy the City Plaza property. Aaron Powell Yeah. And his stated rationale is pretty practical from a business standpoint. It is. Looking ahead to 2027, the city is going to replace the Sierra Strait Bridge. A massive multi-year construction project. Trevor Burrus, Exactly. And Stitzer argued that this construction will severely hinder traffic to his current bar's location. Aaron Ross Powell So he's looking for a lifeboat, basically, a way to preemptively save his business. Aaron Powell Yes, but his pitch isn't just moving some beer taps. Aaron Powell Not at all. He proposed a total overhaul of the plaza. We're talking an outdoor bar, a food truck court, a permanent pizza restaurant. Aaron Powell Heckleball courts, a kids' play area, an entertainment stage. Aaron Powell It's a huge undertaking. But hold on, I have to ask, how does a private business owner even initiate taking over a city's primary public square? Aaron Ross Powell Well, there's a specific municipal mechanism for this, usually through a redevelopment agency. Okay. See, maintaining a concrete plaza and managing security costs the city a lot of money, so developers can approach the city to lease or buy it. Aaron Powell Because then the city offloads the maintenance costs to the business. Exactly. Plus, they start collecting loose revenue and sales tax. What's fascinating here is the terminology they use. The big buzzword is activation. Activation. Right. City planners love that word. They do. It describes bringing structured commerce to an area they deem underutilized. Aaron Ross Powell So they argue that adding a pizza place and pickleball makes it more vibrant. Yes, but the line between revitalizing a dead zone and quietly privatizing a public good is incredibly thin. I mean, I see the logic from his side. Building a lifeboat to survive construction, but I have to challenge the scale here. Great. The scale is massive. Isn't it a huge overreach when your proposed lifeboat requires dismantling the city's primary civic square? And that tension is exactly what turned this into a flashpoint. Plus, the bureaucratic process made it worse. Oh, the vote, yeah. Stitzer brought this to the Reno Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board. They voted four to three to just study the feasibility of his proposal. A razor-thin margin. And made infinitely more complicated by the fact that Stitzer himself sits on that very board. Now the sources note he did formally recuse himself from this specific vote, which is the legal requirement. Sure. But the optics. A board member proposing to take over the premier public space, and his own board approves the study. Yeah, it ignited the community. Here's where it gets really interesting. The Digital Town Square, fully mobilized to defend the physical town square. It was organized and furious. We read through the Reno subreddit and public comments from city meetings. And for residents, this wasn't just about losing a skate park. No, they view this as the erasure of a fundamental civic utility. One resident, Adrian Rodriguez, articulated this perfectly in the public comments. He defended the plaza as Reno's only dedicated free speech plaza. Right. It's the de facto staging ground for public protests. Yeah, like the No Kings protest just this past March. And that is a crucial function of municipal land. You cannot comfortably or legally hold a rally in the middle of a private beer garden. Because private management can just refuse service or kick you out. A plaza belongs to the First Amendment. At least patio does not. And the Reddit threads really zeroed in on the language in the Eddy's proposal, specifically the claim that their project would discourage urban blight. That word blight acted like a lightning rod. Oh, absolutely. Because blight depends entirely on who is writing the proposal. To a developer, people loitering without spending money looks like blight. But to the community, those people are utilizing a vital resource. Right. Locals came armed with receipts, too. They pointed out that every Tuesday, a mutual aid soup kitchen operates right there in the plaza. Yes, family soup mutual aid. They rely on that unmonetized concrete to feed vulnerable people. They're huge community bike nights that start there too. What you're seeing is a real-time defense of the third space. Can you explain that concept a bit more? Sure. So if your home is the first space and your workplace is the second space, the third space is where civic life happens. Like public libraries or parks. Exactly. Places you can exist without opening your wallet. But in modern cities, third spaces are almost entirely commercialized now. Right. You can socialize, but only if you buy a six dollar coffee first. Right. And the Eddy's PR team seemed to sense this frustration, but their response just backfired completely. And the internet does not respond well to semantic gymnastics. They tore it to shreds. Yeah. Redditors accused it of reading like AI-generated corporate spin. Yeah, one user wrote something like, They're destroying one of the last third spaces just to throw beer cans down the river. And they didn't just complain. They started pulling up archival city planning documents. The Civic SLU thing was honestly remarkable. They found a 1995 redevelopment agency report that explicitly identified the need for a public town square right there. And they pointed to the Truckee River Vision Plan. Yeah, which promised the public that exact spot would remain open following the Mapes Hotel demolition. It's like they're holding the city to a 30-year-old contract. They are aggressively choosing the chaos of a free public space over a curated vision of commerce, because chaos represents freedom of access. But, you know, there is a reality on the ground that goes far beyond abstract debates over access or PR spin. Yes, there is. While people argue online about pickleball, there is a stark human cost to Reno's downtown redevelopment. This is where we have to look past the planning documents. We need to look at the people actually sleeping on that concrete. Exactly. And the article from Our Town Reno really grounds this debate. They do incredible street-level journalism. They do. They detail the lives of Bill Akee and Jamie Lehman. They're a married couple, together for nine years, and they are currently living in a tent in the literal shadow of the Believe sculpture. If we connect this to the bigger picture, their situation highlights the massive disconnect between municipal rebranding and ground level survival. Right. Reno has been aggressively changing its image. The tourism sites push this whole downtown makeover. But the sources highlight an uncomfortable question about that rebranding. To make room for luxury hotels and outdoor bars, cities tear down low-income housing. And rents skyrocket. So locals start asking, who is this new city actually for? Is revitalization just a polite word for replacement? For Bill and James, that fear is a daily reality. Jamie is a native of nearby Carson City, and Bill has lived in the Reno area since 1983. They aren't transplants. They're deeply rooted residents who've just been economically priced out. And the details of their daily struggle are just harrowing. Jamie has a medical condition causing seizures, so she uses a wheelchair and can't work. And according to the reporting, she receives food stamps, but the maximum is $194 a month. Which doesn't come close to feeding two adults for a month. Not at all. But we need to explain why she has to stretch that for two people, because the mechanics of this are maddening. It really is. See, Bill actually works. He has a steady paycheck, but because of his income, he doesn't qualify for food assistance. But it's not because he's making a comfortable living. He makes exactly one dollar too much to qualify. Right. It's known as the benefits cliff. Social safety nets have these rigid binary thresholds. So if you make one single dollar over the line. Your benefits don't taper off. They drop to zero instantly. Wow. The system essentially penalizes him for working. They are in a worse financial position than if he just quit his job. So we have a couple living under a sculpture, relying on a system that cuts them off over literally four quarters. Yeah. The article noted what they actually eat, too. They sit on a tattered blanket near the river, and their meals often consist of crackers, chicken jerky, and sriracha. For lunch and dinner on repeat. The juxtaposition is just jarring. You have politicians and developers debating the most profitable way to activate the square with artisanal pizza. And meanwhile, the people who rely on that concrete as an absolute last resort are sitting outside those windows, rationing chicken jerky. Bill gave a quote to the journalist that just stops you in your tracks. Yeah, what did he say? He talked about lying in his tent, looking up at this massive, glowing burning man sculpture, telling him to believe. And he said, quote, we can't even afford food. That kind of thing, it makes it harder to believe. It brings you down. That is heavy. It acts as an unintentional indictment of the art itself, depending on your vantage point. Right. Laura Kempton designed a deeply personal tribute to her father. But context dictates meaning. When a command to believe is placed in the epicenter of a housing crisis, towering over starving citizens. Kid stops feeling like inspiration. Exactly. It can start to feel like a taunt. We've covered so much ground in this deep dive today. We started with a heartfelt piece of art born in the desert, brought to a city as a monument. We examined how that monument became the target of a corporate bid driven by the promise of activation. We saw citizens mobilized with 30-year-old planning documents to aggressively defend their free speech plaza. And finally, we looked at the marginalized citizens like Bill and Shamey, who are just trying to survive the economic fallout of all this progress. So what does this all mean? It really makes you look at your own city differently, doesn't it? It absolutely does. Reno is really a microcosm for the modern American city right now. Yeah. Next time you walk through a downtown plaza, just take a look around. Where do people in your town gather to protest or celebrate? Where can a teenager or a struggling couple sit on a bench without paying an admission fee? Because history shows us that once those unmonetized spaces are paved over and leased out, they almost never come back. And as you consider those spaces in your own neighborhoods, consider the heavy steel of the believe sculpture. Yeah. If a city's public square is the truest reflection of its values, what does it actually say about a community when a massive monument commands hope, while the people living directly beneath it are legally classified as blight? That's a powerful point. Does building a true community require us to believe in the shiny commercial future of a city? Or does it demand that we believe in the people currently struggling on its sidewalks? Have you ever looked at a piece of public art and wondered who it's actually for? Maybe it's time we all started asking exactly who owns the ground it stands on.