Restaurant possible first step for downtown Henderson

The rebirth of Henderson’s downtown comes through business investors willing to take the first step.

Berwick’s Urban Lounge’s recent opening is being looked to as a possible first step in what city officials and downtown business leaders hope is the start of something bigger.

“With any redevelopment you have to give people a reason to go,” said Jimmy Wike, a retired casino executive and owner of Berwick’s. “One of the first things is food, drink, and they go for entertainment. Then what happens is the retail follows.”

UNLV assistant professor Karen A. Danielsen said a theory in urban planning is that gathering places, such as restaurants and bars, tend to help attract people to an area.

“The more people you have on the street by having these places where people naturally congregate you make a street safer and lively,” said Danielsen, who studies urban planning and design. “It attends to attract more development.”

Berwick’s, which is operated by partner Bill Berdie, another former casino executive, is on the ground floor of the Pinnacle Building, 203 S. Water St., across from the convention center. The location is the first under the city’s new downtown urban lounge classification: limited gaming, full food service, bar and 15 hours of live entertainment a week.

NEEDED: A PLACE TO GO

Wike is familiar with downtown, having lived there 16 years before retiring from casinos and moving to Mesquite in 2010. Berwick’s target audience during the week is City Hall, a complex of nearly 1,300 professionals including the neighboring police station.

“There’s really no place for middle-class, white-collar workers to go and have a nice lunch, or a drink after work,” said Wike, adding there is not anywhere downtown for a nice business lunch outside a casino.

After City Hall closes at 5:30 p.m., downtown Henderson becomes largely a ghost town with few people on the street. Downtown does have three casinos — Emerald Island, Eldorado and the Rainbow Club — but no hotel. About 4,100 people live in the houses downtown, and the city would like to see another 3,500 through the redevelopment.

Danielsen said there needs to be a mix of not only bars and restaurants but also reasons for people to be there.

“Usually having housing nearby or some sort of school that brings young people in there is needed,” Danielsen said. “You need a mix of ages, or even people who are younger and willing to live there inexpensively.”

A pair of developers are in the early stages of acquiring land in the Water Street District that fits that description if their proposed mixed-use projects are built. Architect Windom Kimsey is acquiring a half acre of vacant city land for the assessed value of $167,000 south of City Hall. Kimsey plans to develop a mixed-use residential and retail project.

Former real estate executive Jon Legarza has an agreement to acquire a half acre on city land on Tin Street and Basic Road next to City Hall. Plans for Tin Pan Lofts include apartment flats Legarza said he plans to market to young professionals, including teachers and employees at neighboring McCaw Elementary School or Nevada State College a block away.

OTHERS WILL FOLLOW

Danielsen said that when a few projects begin, others tend to follow in redevelopment.

“When that stuff starts happening, it tends to build pretty quickly,” she said.

Henderson Redevelopment Manager Michelle Romero said the Water Street District is being envisioned as a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week community for downtown residents, workers and visitors, including out-of-towners and Henderson residents who live in master-planned communities such as Green Valley, Inspirada and Anthem.

Romero said there is no one downtown that Henderson is modeling its plans after, but the area needs to be walkable, have activity, be pleasant to look at and have places for social gathering, such as Berwick’s.

“You need to make it fit your community,” Romero said. “There are no two downtowns that are the same, but they do have similar characteristics. Once you get the bones in place then you build to fit your community.”

Outside of a few events every year at the Henderson Events Center next to City Hall — the Fourth of July Parade, a Hawaiian festival, concerts — there are few restaurants, shops or galleries to lure people downtown when they’re off work.

The city’s Convention Center across from Berwick’s needs updating, something the city has been studying for years. The convention center hosts between 400 and 800 meetings and small events a year, and plans being looked at include adding a hotel with as many as 150 rooms in a private-public partnership to help increase the number of events.

“There is a market out here for multi-day events if we can get a hotel,” said Romero, adding the city could provide incentives such as land but the developer would have to bear most of the construction cost.

In February, the city received the results of a feasibility study on a convention center hotel and is now in the process of gathering information from developers, hoteliers and hospitality groups to gauge interest, Romero said.

GOALS: JOBS, RESIDENTS, TOURISTS

City officials would like to see downtown redevelopment create 500 new jobs, attract new residents and double the number of annual tourists to 1 million.

They would like to have no more than four urban lounges similar to Berwick’s in the downtown area and retain a family- and pedestrian-friendly downtown with more general retail and restaurants in the district, along with mixed-use residential/retail/office space buildings and stand-alone offices.

Danielsen said Henderson’s desire to have a family-friendly downtown could present barriers to redevelopment.

“Family communities don’t make for vibrant downtowns, necessarily,” said Danielsen, who advised Henderson on urban planning a few years ago. “They might after the first wave (of redevelopment). You need a lot of young adults there, and you need a lot of housing that appeals to young people.”

Earlier this year, the City Council loosened zoning regulations adopted in 2002 to include incentives for redevelopment, reworked guidelines for residential, commercial and mixed-use development.

About $500 million was reinvested and redeveloped downtown since 2002, including $12 of outside investment for every $1 invested by the Henderson Redevelopment Agency, according to the Downtown Investment Strategy Update report released in June.

Wike said the city’s commitment is part of the reason he has decided to invest early in downtown redevelopment.

“I can see the city is committed to redevelopment,” Wike said. “By the time everything gets going in a year, two years from now, it could be too late to get in.”

Contact Arnold M. Knightly at aknightly@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3882. Follow @KnightlyGrind on Twitter.