SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — Geno Martini, the longest serving mayor in the northern Nevada city of Sparks, who helped lead its downtown redevelopment for nearly two decades with an infectious smile larger than his big frame, has died. He was 77.
Local leaders on Friday praised the lifelong resident and mayor of the city neighboring Reno from 2005-2018 as a dedicated, humble public servant who helped inspire others.
“Geno was the rare leader with no ego,” said Sparks City Councilwoman Charlene Bybee, who serves as chair of the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority. “Everything he did was for the love of his city and for all of northern Nevada.”
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Martini died Thursday night, according to a Facebook post Friday from his daughter, Gina Martini-Gonzalez. Martini announced in 2015 that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease since 2012.
“I’m so glad he’s finally at peace after a rough couple of weeks,” his daughter wrote. “Thank you to everyone who came to visit these last few days.”
Adam Mayberry, longtime Sparks city spokesman and current Washoe County school board member, was among many who described Martini as a “mentor and father-like figure.”
“He touched so many lives,” Mayberry said.
Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson said everyone who knew him “loved and respected the man who could bring a smile to anyone’s face.”
Martini served as a city councilman for five years before he was appointed to fill the end of a vacant mayoral term in 2005 and won re-election four times, the last with 78% of the vote in 2014.
As the smaller neighbor of the self-declared “Biggest Little City in the World,” Martini enjoyed promoting Sparks’ historic rivalry with Reno, often tongue in cheek. He said he was born at Reno’s Saint Mary’s hospital only because Sparks had no hospital in 1946.
“I had to be born in Reno. I lived there for three days, moved out and never been back since,” he joked in an interview with the Reno Gazette Journal in 2017.
Martini helped lead downtown revitalization efforts where the town sprung up along the railroad in 1905. He also helped pave the way for multiple regional parks, a marina along Interstate 80 and later a nearby outdoor mall where earlier this year the first casino in the Reno-Sparks area in a quarter-century opened.
Martini told the Gazette Journal in 2018 he was especially proud of the downtown redevelopment efforts.
“We’ve been trying for a long, long time to get somebody to develop downtown Sparks,” he said. “Over the last years from 1999 until now, we couldn’t get anybody to even build an outhouse down there.”
