Can Church and Cinema Coexist? A Bold Proposal for Reno’s Riverwalk Theater
With the sale to Living Stones Church confirmed and remodeling starting, a pivotal downtown site faces a turning point. Will it be exclusive—or expansive?
Dec 30, 2025
What was once speculation has now become a shift in ownership of one of the City’s most notable —but underutilized—riverfront spaces.
With the sale to Living Stones Church confirmed and remodeling starting, a pivotal downtown site faces a turning point. Will it be exclusive—or expansive?
The reaction has been skeptical. People worry that a prime downtown entertainment venue could be lost to a limited-use religious facility.
This controversy isn’t about religion; it’s about land use, downtown vitality, and whether Reno has the tools and processes to protect scarce, high-value civic space from being quietly converted into a low-activation, tax-exempt, single-use property without public process or policy review.
As Living Stones Church now owns the downtown movie theater, a vision emerges: what if Reno didn’t have to choose between faith and film? Craig Parish, a pastor with Living Stones, had previously shared that the church was exploring a mixed-use opportunity.
“We’re imagining an activated riverfront project alongside the church with possible things like a coffee shop, quick bites, retail, art gallery/workshop, preschool, anchor restaurant…” —Craig Parish, July 2025
Their goal, according to Parish, is to create something more than a sanctuary, something “in the city, for the city.” Now that the property is theirs, there’s a unique window to shape what this space becomes and whether it serves the entire community.
A Shared Vision: Church + Arts + Coffee + Gallery
With its riverfront walkable location and screening infrastructure, the Riverside Theater is one of the City’s most promising cultural properties. Now, it could be headed in a new direction.
Instead of an either/or scenario, Living Stones has the opportunity to create a hybrid project —one that recognizes the building’s entertainment value while embracing the church’s spiritual mission.
Dedicate a worship space for Living Stones’ services and events, and then dedicate one or two of the screening rooms as an art theater.
This could include independent film screenings, classic film nights, educational programming, youth media workshops, and film festivals. It would provide Reno with its first dedicated art house cinema, something the City has long lacked.
The remaining parts of the building could then house:
A coffee shop or café open to the public daily
A gallery or maker space showcasing local artists
Possibly classrooms or flexible retail uses
An anchor restaurant or community kitchen
This model of shared space, featuring a mix of cultural, spiritual, and commercial functions, is gaining popularity in revitalized downtowns across the country.
In places like Austin, Portland, and Santa Fe, churches and art organizations have successfully collaborated under one roof to serve broader communities.
Financial and Cultural Benefits
For Living Stones, incorporating an art theater would serve not only the public but also ensure greater activation of the building and attract grant opportunities, arts funding, and community partnerships. It would also deepen the church’s mission of contributing to Reno’s cultural life.
For Reno residents, it would mean the return of downtown cinema, not as a corporate megaplex, but as a curated, community-run venue for creativity, dialogue, and discovery. It would also ensure that a key riverfront property stays alive seven days a week, not just on Sundays.
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How Can the City of Reno Influence the Outcome?
A Councilmember has framed the controversy as a question of private property rights. They say that the City of Reno does not control private real estate transactions. The sale of the building was a private deal between a buyer and a seller, and the City cannot block a purchaser based on their identity.
What that framing leaves out is what happens after the sale. While the City cannot control ownership, it does regulate land use. Zoning, design review, and redevelopment standards continue to apply — especially for a riverfront property inside the Downtown Redevelopment Area.
Those rules exist to ensure that high-value downtown sites contribute to pedestrian activity, street-level activation, and economic spillover. This is why concerns about inactive frontage and the loss of existing retail space are legitimate policy questions, not emotional reactions.
Downtown redevelopment guidelines aim to prevent blank walls and inward-facing uses along key pedestrian corridors, such as First Street and the Riverwalk.
The conversion of the Riverside Century theaters into tax-exempt religious property has a direct, measurable fiscal cost that has not been part of the public discussion. While the building was privately owned, it generated $114,326 per year in property taxes, including $36,843 for the Reno Redevelopment Agency, $16,490 for the City of Reno’s general fund, nearly $20,000 for the Washoe County School District, and $19,475 for the Reno Business Improvement District, which funds downtown maintenance and activation.
Once the property becomes church-owned, that entire revenue stream drops to zero permanently. Over ten years, that is more than $1.1 million removed from public budgets, and over a generation, it exceeds $3 million.
The costs are shifted onto other property owners and taxpayers. So this is not just a question of religious use or cultural fit; it is a long-term fiscal decision that weakens downtown’s financial base and directly contradicts the city’s stated redevelopment and activation goals.
This is especially serious given the large number of vacancies on Virginia Street and the fact that the city-owned properties, the Ballroom, Event Center, and Bowling Stadium, don’t pay property taxes. The Lear Theater has sat empty for decades, and the former Harrah’s project is in trouble again.
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We Need a Place that Serves the Community
Adaptive reuse is generally preferable to long-term vacancy, but it is not a blank check. The City’s responsibility does not end at the closing table. When a high-value riverfront site changes use, the public interest is not in who occupies the space, but in whether that use supports the broader goals the City itself has articulated for downtown revitalization: active streets, economic spillover, and a built environment that encourages people to linger, walk, and spend time in the core.
Whether a building is occupied is not the only issue; how it engages the street matters. By reducing the problem to “private sale versus vacancy,” the City avoids grappling with the broader responsibility it still holds.
The real question is not who bought the building, but whether the resulting use aligns with the City’s own stated goals for downtown revitalization.
Concerns about “dead frontage” on First Street are not aesthetic nitpicking but central to downtown policy. Blank walls, closed facades, and non-retail ground floors break pedestrian flow and undermine adjacent businesses.
Preventing those outcomes is precisely why redevelopment guidelines exist and why downtown properties are treated differently from buildings in industrial parks or suburban commercial zones.
The City of Reno should work with Livingstone Church to ensure the property serves not only the church but also the community.