UPDATE: Reno City Council approves public financing to help pay for a GSR arena

The Reno City Council on Wednesday approved an estimated $68.1 million tax-increment financing (TIF) plan that will help fund the Grand Sierra Resort’s plan to build a new 10,000-seat multi-use arena that will be home to the Nevada Wolf Pack men's basketball team.

The council voted 5-2 in favor of the plan following more than six hours of public comments and debate among the council. Councilmembers Kathleen Taylor and Meghan Ebert were opposed.

“I want to reiterate and explain that this is a tax. We do not just hand them a check,” Mayor Hillary Schieve said before the vote. “It has to be generated based on what they do, what they build. I think there are people out there that are saying that we're just going to give them our tax dollars.”

Council members were told costs to develop the first phase — the arena, a parking garage, a public ice skating rink and and a golf facility — had risen by $153 million to $786 million, primarily because of the rising cost of materials needed for the arena.

Grand Sierra Resort owner Alex Meruelo told council members that he’s invested more than $500 million into the property and promised to donate 5 percent of TIF revenues back to the city for youth sports and recreational facilities “to make a difference in this district.”

The six-hour hearing included some two hours of mostly favorable public comment from community members, Grand Sierra Resort employees and University of Nevada students. Longtime gaming executive Phil Satre, who spent 20 years as chairman of the Reno-based Harrah’s Corp., said the project would diversify the Reno gaming market.

“We haven't made those big investments that you need to drive the diversification or demand,” Satre said. “I believe that we have the opportunity to do that now.”

— Howard Stutz, 5/7/2025

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ORIGINAL STORY: An up-to-eight-figure public financing deal — part of an effort to build a new men’s basketball arena for the Nevada Wolf Pack — has drawn uproar from the region’s major casino players as it heads to a vote Wednesday before the Reno City Council.

The redevelopment project announced by the Grand Sierra Resort in 2023 involves building a new 10,000-seat multi-use arena and other improvements. The project looks to use a tax-increment financing (TIF) plan that would divert an estimated $68.1 million in tax revenue generated through the project’s life back to the casino to pay for the project’s costs. 

Though other regional casinos have sought to sink the TIF plan, the project has a prominent proponent — UNR — which has an agreement with the Grand Sierra Resort (GSR) for the university’s men’s basketball team to play in the state-of-the-art arena.

Why is the university backing this project? What does it stand to gain?

UNR President Brian Sandoval, the first alum to sit in the president’s office, went to Ohio State for law school and wants to see the Pack grow like the Buckeyes.

In an interview with The Nevada Independent, Sandoval, a former two-term governor, said no one has offered to invest in the university’s current on-campus basketball arena, Lawlor Events Center, which was built in 1984 and hasn’t been updated to meet modern standards for Division I programs. 

“It will benefit our students, and give them a better experience,” said Sandoval, who was recently appointed to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors. “It may be the last opportunity to have a project of this quality and at this magnitude ever.” 

Opposition has stemmed from a coalition of competing casino owners who say that Grand Sierra Resort should pay for the project without using TIF.

Proponents of TIF projects say they help reduce blight and fund infrastructure investments in areas that otherwise wouldn't be developed, but opponents say their structure can be overly opaque and keep tax dollars away from municipal governments, which still have to provide services to the region. Some observers have noted that without the university’s support, the GSR’s project might not have the same chance of success.

The GSR and the proposed arena site are located within the boundaries of a redevelopment project area established in 2005 and known as Reno Redevelopment Project Area 2 (RDA 2). 

No one in the industry opposed the GSR — then called the Reno Hilton — and Boomtown being amended into RDA 2 in 2005, he said, adding that a project of the magnitude being proposed by the GSR will provide broader benefits than just to the casino.

“Part of that coalition [has said] this isn't what TIF money should be used for, and they are correct, except for RDA 2,” Sandoval said. “There was a conscious decision to include this property back at the time to hopefully incentivize an owner of that property to make improvements.”

Representatives from the coalition of casino owners and GSR owner Alex Meruelo declined interview requests for this story.

Reviews of campaign finance data show that all but one Reno City councilmember has received a mix of campaign donations from a coalition member and the GSR. Councilmember Meghan Ebert received no donations from the casinos, and Councilmember Naomi Duerr did not receive a donation from the GSR.

History of the Reno Development Area 2

TIF isn’t new in Nevada. 

The Legislature in 1957 authorized cities and counties to use TIF to capture incremental property tax revenues from new developments to reinvest in project areas designated as blighted. The idea was to incentivize new construction or significant improvements that reset the assessed value of an area and address depreciation that eats away at municipalities’ property tax revenues. 

UNR’s University Center for Economic Development Director Frederick Steinmann told The Nevada Independent Friday that TIF arrangements have been used to fund construction at  Sparks’ Victorian Avenue and Marina, downtown Minden, Gardnerville and Henderson’s Water Street.

Reno’s redevelopment, he said, began with the establishment of Redevelopment Project Area 1 (RDA 1) in 1983. Steinmann said the area targeted the downtown core and funded projects such as the National Automobile Museum, Reno Ballroom, Downtown Events Center and National Bowling Stadium.

He pointed to a cost-benefit analysis from the Reno Redevelopment Agency, finding that from 1983 to 2005, when the area was used, it led to a $34.2 million net benefit, including $44.1 million in sales, hotel and gaming taxes.

Steinmann, who worked with Reno’s redevelopment agency in the 2000s, said he was there when the city council approved the initial creation of RDA 2 in August 2005. 

Records show it passed on a 6-1 vote, with then-Councilmember Jessica Sferrazza voting no. Former Mayor Bob Cashell predicted, “Everyone will benefit from the redevelopment project.”

The Downtown Improvement Association, which then consisted of the Eldorado, Circus Circus, Silver Legacy and Harrah’s, was in support.

In June 2006, the city council amended the area to include the Reno Hilton (now Grand Sierra Resort), which proposed building an arena, condominiums and multiple towers on the property. Plans were dropped during the Great Recession in 2008.

Sandoval said he’s frustrated because “a previous city council adopted and amended the Reno Hilton into (RDA 2) with no objection from anybody in the community.”

Steinmann, who penned an op-ed supporting the use of TIF for the project, noted that there’s often a misconception that TIF only applies to property taxes, but there’s not a “p” in front of it — tax increment financing also covers sales and other tax sources. He said that after the redevelopment project area expires in ten years, the taxes will flow back into the appropriate tax districts. 

Who is Alex Meruelo?

Meruelo bought the 2,000-room hotel-casino in 2011 for $42 million. It was rebranded as the Grand Sierra five years before the purchase. The property first opened in 1978 as the MGM Grand Reno and has been operated by multiple ownership groups. 

Meruelo, 61, a Cuban-American billionaire, bought financially troubled SLS Las Vegas in 2017 for an undisclosed price and restored the Strip resort to its original name — Sahara Las Vegas — two years later.

He bought the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes in 2019 for $300 million but sold it in 2024 to a Utah group amid a failed vote for public financing to help build a 16,000-seat hockey arena.

Though Meruelo’s been criticized for his actions in Arizona, Sandoval described him as “a man of his word.”

“He's an aggressive businessman,” Sandoval said. “In Southern Nevada, at the Sahara — that's another distressed property that he invested a lot of money into to make it right.”

Meruelo has supported UNR financially since entering Nevada, including the basketball program and the school’s name, image and likeness effort. 

Besides the project’s September 2023 announcement and a surprise appearance last month, Meruelo has not spoken publicly about the project and has declined media interviews. 

Andrew Diss, senior vice president for Meruelo Gaming, told The Nevada Independent in an email that Meruelo couldn’t talk “as he's deep in the final negotiations” but would lead Wednesday’s presentation to the city council.

In a Reno Gazette-Journal op-ed last week, Meruelo wrote that “projects of this scale are not economically feasible without some form of [public-private partnership].”

The plan is opposed by a coalition of competing resort operators who believe TIF money should not be used to fund construction costs and that GSR is not in a blighted area. The group, which includes owners of the Eldorado, Silver Legacy and Circus Circus, Sparks Nugget, Atlantis, Bonanza and Peppermill, recently sent a letter to the city council warning that the elected officials would be establishing “a dangerous precedent if TIF is allowed for privately-owned arenas.”

Sandoval said he was concerned that “things are getting misrepresented” by the coalition.

“They’re telling city council and the public TIF money was never meant for casino redevelopment, which is false,” Sandoval said. “Reno Hilton [now Grand Sierra] was specifically amended into this RDA for this purpose.”

New arena plans

The Grand Sierra Arena will have just above 10,000 seats, 1,000 fewer than Lawlor’s capacity. But the new arena will have luxury suites and premium seating areas, which is expected to boost revenue and attendance.

While UNR does not have to pay any costs to build the arena, there will be operational fees for when the team has a home game. UNR will keep all the revenue from ticket sales. 

“One thing that was important to me, and I told Alex, is that we can't feel like we're the visiting team on our home floor,” Sandoval said. “He’s going to build a dedicated locker room for the basketball team. There will be signage and all those things that are specific to Nevada when we have our games. The risk for us is, if we don't have a winning team, people don't come.”

While it would be preferable to have a new on-campus arena, Sandoval said the Grand Sierra Resort plan was the best available option. He said the university would arrange to bus students to the home games, which “isn’t uncommon.”

“I timed (the drive). It's five minutes from my parking spot on campus to the Grand Sierra,” Sandoval said.