They must have a long memory. The Ormsby House was closed on Sept. 23, 2000 and hasn’t reopened as a hotel since. Her return has been subject to frequent postponements but -- if you can hang on until this November -- it’s supposed to finally happen, according to the Nevada Appeal. From Sept. 21, 2000 until Oct. 20, 2000, the owners tried to keep the Ormsby House open as a working hotel and remodel it simultaneously. According to blogger – and assiduous Ormsby house chronicler – Scott Schrantz, "at every turn in the construction they ran into setbacks. Leaking pipes, crumbling walls, outdated electrical systems. They finally decided it would be best to just shut the doors and let the place be overrun with construction workers."
Owners Al Fiegehen and Don Lehr promised the job would take nine months. Now it is going on almost 14 years. The exterior is finished but the innards of the property have taken much longer. A 2009 deadline came and went without anything happening. (That’s still a long way from the promised July 4, 2001 [!] reopening.) Relations between Lehr, Fiegehen, and the city grew so contentious that the two men threatened to tear down the building at one point.
The Ormsby House isn’t completely devoid of life. It has a gaming license to maintain, so it keeps a small slot room and bar (The Winchester Club) operating … out of the parking garage! Reno TV reporter Joe Hart, in response to a reader query much like this, inquired into the future of the Ormsby House and was told, "The [construction] permit includes full interior improvements for the casino, buffet and convention space on the first and second floors, and 110 hotel rooms on floors three-10. So even though things look quiet on the outside, there is work going on inside the property." However, it expires in April 2015, giving Lehr and Fiegehen some incentive to get a move on.
This isn’t the first time the Ormsby House has been closed, although a bankruptcy-related 1993-'95 shutdown pales next to the current near-paralysis. Although it is a handsome, sedate building (one where we enjoyed staying in 1999), the Ormsby House is not as old as it probably looks. It was built in 1972 by ex-Gov. Paul Laxalt, who owned it until 1975, when he reentered politics as U.S. senator for Nevada. Note well that Laxalt built the hotel in almost a fifth of the time its current owners have taken with their snail-paced fixer-upper project.
