Mapes supporters plan to hang mayor in effigy after implosion

RENO, Nev. - With the Mapes Hotel's implosion less than two weeks away, about 100 preservationists gathered Sunday to express their outrage over the Reno City Council's handling of the building's fate.

At a downtown rally held in the shadow of the 52-year-old landmark, preservationists waved placards at passing motorists and heard speakers criticize the council's vote to blow it up on Jan. 30, Super Bowl Sunday.

"Recall the mayor," the crowd chanted at one point, voicing their opposition to Reno Mayor Jeff Griffin's support for demolition.

Organizer Pete Menchetti said protesters originally planned to hang Griffin in effigy at the rally, but now will do so on the actual day of the implosion.

"I'm not so sure about the building anymore," he said. "But even if it's too late to save the Mapes, it's not too late to be as mad as hell over what happened."

Griffin has said he understands preservationists' emotional attachment to the first building in the nation constructed to house a casino, hotel and entertainment under one roof.

"But we have now reached a point where the will of the majority - and the people's elected representatives - is clear," the mayor said.

Menchetti disputed that, saying Griffin's own campaign poll in 1998 found 76 percent of Reno residents supported saving the Mapes if it was financially feasible to do so.

He said the implosion is unnecessary because a San Francisco Bay area developer has a $23 million plan to restore the building for senior housing with private funds.

The City Council last week rejected the plan for a second time in six months. The proposal was one of six rejected by the council last year as not financially feasible or the best use of the property.

Other speakers shared Menchetti's views, saying the implosion of the 12-story building shuttered since 1982 will leave a black mark on Reno.

"Destroying this building is not downtown revitalization," Judy Cloud said. "It's like destroying the taproot of a beautiful tree. This boondoggle will not go unnoticed by voters or the world."

Nanna Rassu agreed: "This city council has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The Mapes is what built the gambling industry in Reno and Nevada. It hasn't been given a fair shake by the council."

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers the Mapes the most vulnerable historic building in America.

In recent weeks, the trust has suffered a series of legal setbacks in its efforts to save the Mapes, which featured entertainers such as Mae West, Ray Bolger and the Marx Brothers during its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.

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