Fate of Mapes Hotel Might Be Sealed

The Mapes Hotel stands at the end of the downtown gambling strip, demurely countering the gaudy casinos down the street.

Instead of beads of blinking lights running up and down its facade, it has concrete panels in bas relief. Instead of a riot of neon on the roof, it has an Art Deco zigzag cornice.

But the 1947 building on the Truckee River was the beginning of all that flashy artifice, the prototype for the modern high-rise hotel casinos offering food and entertainment.

And it may soon meet the same fate as some of its successors--death by explosives.

Reno City Council members say that they have had enough of a long-running battle to preserve the Mapes, which has been vacant since 1982.

Rejecting the most recent round of proposals to renovate the 12-story brick-and-concrete structure on Virginia Street, the council has set the stage for the Mapes’ demolition. One councilman has even suggested blowing up the city-owned building on New Year’s Eve to grab some national media attention.

Preservationists are considering legal challenges and fuming that Reno is about to tear down yet another piece of its history.

“As an architect and a person who has lived here since 1959, I’ve seen what we’ve lost. We’ve lost a tremendous amount of buildings,” said Jon Dewey, vice president of the Truckee Meadows Heritage Trust and a member of the city’s Historical Resources Commission.

“The new buildings are stucco boxes with lights. There is no architecture,” he said. “[The Mapes] is a building that is irreplaceable. We have very few high-rise buildings like this.”

The national preservation community has also raised alarms.

“Buildings like this are being saved and renovated all over the country. That’s why we are so frustrated Reno can’t do the same thing,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which last year placed the Mapes on its annual list of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places.

City officials retort that the Mapes is not all that it’s cracked up to be. “It’s not a historic building. I’m older than the Mapes,” said Councilman Tom Herndon, whose ward includes the hotel.

While Mayor Jeff Griffin conceded that the building has some nice features, he maintained that on the whole it is not “a grand building that you can go into and say, ‘Ohhh.’ ”

Moreover, he said, the city has tried for years to find a savior for the hotel, but plans have either fallen through or, as far as the council is concerned, been unworkable.

“Richard Moe has never been in the building. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Griffin said. “He told me he could make things happen and what we’ve been subjected to is criticism, nothing constructive.”

Preservationists say that the council has simply made up its mind to destroy the Mapes, recently discarding proposals well worth pursuing.

The one most favored by the save-the-Mapes crowd was presented over the summer by a small Oakland-based firm that wanted to turn the hotel into market-rate housing for senior citizens.

“We’re very confident in carrying this project through,” said Karl Diaz-Hoffmann, president of Nationwide Capital Services, which made the proposal. “We had the financing all lined up. The council appeared to be really set on tearing this building down.”

After the council rejected his plan and others last month, Diaz-Hoffmann returned to say he was ready to buy the building within two weeks.

But the council once more gave the thumbs-down.

Griffin said senior citizens housing does not fit in with plans for the Mapes district, where the city wants to develop more entertainment-oriented businesses. Additionally, the council thought Nationwide’s estimate that it could complete the project for $22 million was too low.

“No offense, Mr. Hoffmann, we’ve heard this before and we’re just not convinced,” Griffin said.

Empty for nearly two decades, the hotel has been stripped of many of its interior fixtures, its guts partially ripped open for asbestos removal.

The city bought it for $4.5 million several years ago and is still carrying $2.7 million in debt on the property. Estimates are that it will cost nearly $1 million to tear it down.

Some of its windows are boarded up and pigeons are its only regular visitors.

But in its heyday, Toni Mollett Harsh of the Truckee heritage group recalled, the Mapes was “where you went to see and be seen, where you went for any important function.”

The glass-walled Sky Room on the top floor offered sweeping views, dining for 400, a bar and entertainment. There were private clubs and 174 hotel rooms, along with 40 apartments.

“It’s a beautiful, elegant place,” said singer Tony Bennett, who performed at the Mapes in the late 1950s and returns to Reno annually for casino appearances.

“In New York City it would be like tearing down the Plaza Hotel,” he said. “You shouldn’t do it. The Mapes gave Reno its class.”

It also gave the gaming industry a packaging formula that it has clung to ever since: Combine gambling, dining, entertainment and lodging under one roof in a high-rise building.

Las Vegas learned the formula so well that it long ago overshadowed Reno as a gambling center, contributing to downtown’s decline.

“What we have to do is rebuild the tax base in downtown,” said Herndon, who believes demolishing the long vacant hotel will help redevelopment. “The Mapes has become a symbol of inaction.”

But the council may not yet be rid of the Mapes.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” said Moe of the National Trust. “We’re going to explore every possible angle we can to try to save it. We’re looking at some legal options. We’d really like to persuade the City Council to change its mind.”