Ormsby House potential buyer discusses vision for Carson City's historic building, plus: a look inside after 19 years

Joe D’Angelo says he has spent the majority his life helping people. After several failed attempts to bring large-scale community projects to different cities in Nevada, he has now set his sights on Carson City to make his “Joshua’s Community” dreams come to life with the purchase of the Ormsby House. 

However, D’Angelo’s plans are not finalized yet, because according to him, the Carson City Board of Supervisors has not approved his plans and the city is discussing whether or not he would need a Special Use Permit to complete his project. 

According to D’Angelo, “Joshua’s House” could generate around $50 million in economic impact for workers, and could create up to 350 local jobs. He said he wants to use local contractors to complete the work, and source art, produce, and more from local businesses and residents.

D’Angelo said he has spent the majority of his life working in some form with Christian ministries, and he has no intention of bringing gaming or alcohol back to the Ormsby House, which is to be renamed “Joshua’s House” if his plans proceed. Joshua is the Greek name for Jesus, said D’Angelo, and the big man is the one who is truly in charge of the facility, not D’Angelo himself.

Instead, D’Angelo wants to turn the Ormsby House into an almost community center-like facility which would include restaurants, a showroom, and a sunken “living room” where the public can mingle and work, similar to a Starbucks. The property would not allow any smoking, gambling or hard alcohol.

In his vision, there will be hotel rooms available for standard nightly rent, D’Angelo said, but the majority of rooms would be long-term rentals in one- or two-room suites. The suites, he said, will be completely separate from the public areas, and have medical amenities inside such as oxygen pumped directly into the rooms, defibrillators, and even a bank-style pneumatic tube system to easily transport medication to guests from the private pharmacy, which will be located in what is now the Ormsby Club. 

The long-term suites would have a separate entrance from the rest of the building, with people entering through the bridge connecting the Ormsby House to the parking lot.

Prices for the long-term rentals would be somewhere around $10,000 a month for the one bedroom suites, and the two-bedroom suites would rent for around $22,000 a month. These prices would be paid either privately or by utilizing insurance companies, said D’Angelo.

“It’s not a convalescent home,” said D’Angelo. “It’s an all-inclusive, five-star facility with in-house medical concierge service. This is not a new idea; all of the five-star resorts in Vegas have some form of a medical concierge service. If the Sheik of Bahrain is visiting a Las Vegas resort and gets injured, he’s not going to go into the neighborhood urgent care.” 

Jeff Glass, D’Angelo’s Carson City-based publicist, said these prices are on par for any in-home care facility for the elderly, though that’s not what D’Angelo has in store for Joshua’s House.

“There will be two separate entrances, two separate addresses,” said Glass.


D’Angelo said that the only issue he is currently facing with his dream becoming a reality is that people don’t fully understand his vision.

“People keep talking about the Ormsby,” said D’Angelo. “They don’t want the name to be changed, they don’t want the history to be lost. The name hasn’t done anyone any good for the past 19 years. It’s like common sense has gone straight out the door. Things have got to be brought up into the present and modernized.” 

D’Angelo said he is surprised by the amount of interest, both negative and positive, that he has received since beginning to discuss his plans.

“I just thought I was going to buy a building, get permits and build,” he said. “I didn’t know how important the building was to Carson City. Now I know, now I have learned. I’m not out to disappoint the people. But I will say that a hotel casino will not work. This building will work, however, because it has a sentimental value to people. So if that value is captured, everyone is going to be very happy about it and very excited about it.”

Carson City Supervisor Lori Bagwell said that while she and the board have not yet seen the plans for the project, she is looking forward to viewing what could be in store. 

“Opening the Ormsby House is important to the community, and I’m very excited we have someone who is looking to invest in the property,” said Bagwell. “I look forward to seeing the plans.” 


D’Angelo said he believes that he does not need a special use permit from the city because there are no rules or regulations in place that “Joshua’s House” specifically falls under, as his idea has not been done before. 

“The city is talking about a special use permit, but what I’m proposing is outside the scope of the current rules and regulations that pertain to that permit. It’s hitting an area they’ve never addressed. They told me that the special use permit would override everything, but I’m arguing that they can’t hold me against rules that aren’t there. It’s not their money, it’s not their building so if they want to play that game, I will walk. My negotiations with them are very obvious: Give me what I want.”

D’Angelo stated that he has not formally met with any members of the Board of Supervisors, but in casual meetings they have been very cordial and professional, and he believes they all have the same intent, to see the Ormsby House flourish. 


This is not the first time that D’Angelo has fought to make his dreams a reality. According to D’Angelo, he tried twice before in Las Vegas with similar ideas to help those in the homeless population by creating a subdivision-like community to help get them back on their feet. He also said he’d tried to create a project in Winnemucca, but according to Winnemucca City Manager Alicia Heiser she couldn’t find any information regarding a potential project by D’Angelo or under Joshua’s Community. 

“Joshua’s Community” in Pahrump was the plan that had gone the furthest out of those previously mentioned. D’Angelo set out to build a community on 87,000 acres of land in the desert near Pahrump where those in poverty or people who were homeless could come and live in residential halls located on a campus that included features such as parks, a performance hall, a water park, museums, recreation centers, and a fairground. 


D’Angelo met with the Town of Pahrump Board (which has now been disbanded) on May 25, 2010 to discuss Joshua’s Community. It appears the D’Angelo got the backing of the Board after they came to an agreement that Joshua’s Community would include the Pahrump Arts and Recreation Complex (PARC), which would be accessible to the public. 


In the minutes of the meeting, D’Angelo said he was not asking the town of Pahrump for any money, and that the community would be privately funded, and would bring in an 800 bed surgical hospital, schools, parks and recreation venues, among other buildings. 

He also stated that the McKinney-Vento Act would help obtain land from the Bureau of Land Management to Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. 

D’Angelo asked that the town help in acquiring the land necessary for his plans, but that he needed no money to build the project. 

According to the meeting minutes, he also promised that at a later date he would be prepared to name the companies that would be funding the projects, and that whether or not he would gain the contract or land for the Joshua Community, he was committed to building the PARC project for Pahrump because it would bring industry and jobs to Pahrump. 

At this time, no such facility has ever been built in Pahrump. 

According to Arnold Knightly, Nye County’s Public Information Officer, it appears that the project fell through because the land D’Angelo was asking for from the Bureau of Land Management was not available. 

D’Angelo said that he had asked the BLM to give him the 87,000 acres so it could be developed into Joshua’s Community, but they refused.

“They told me that they owned the property, and I told them, ‘You don’t own it, you manage it’,” said D’Angelo.

D’Angelo said that the property belongs to the American people and not to the government, but the government disagreed, and the Joshua’s Community project never moved forward, until it’s new iteration now being planned in Carson City. 

In a brochure and informational packet provided by D’Angelo (made available at the bottom of this article), it states that Joseph’s Community was asking for $18 million in loans to fund the program, along with 87,000 acres of BLM land located within the Nevada desert of Nye County.

In the packet, it explained that the proposed community would generate “non-philanthropic income” by meat and dairy operations, mining, green electrical power sales, and produce/aquaponic sales.

The packet outlined that the total planned investment capital for Joseph’s Community was over $250 million, with a required funding of $18 million. Assets were listed in the amount of a $45 million “non-cash asset.”

In the Joshua Community informational packet, Joshua Ventures International was listed as one of three “managers” of the community, and is described as:

“A for-profit corporation that has or will create and manage specific revenue sources to drive Joshua’s Community development programs. For example, state-of-the-art green technologies that are global leaders in the fields of construction, EVs, power generation and high-nutrient-value produce/fish will be demonstrated to US and global decision makers. Our critical goal is to show global decision makers a proven and better model for managing the disadvantaged.”

The packet also explains that Joshua’s Community was going to be funded because they had “private funds from personal business ventures, private loans, pledges and contractual commitments from private corporations. Ongoing funds are generated through our ‘Income Stream.’”

After failing to obtain the 87,000 acres of desert, D’Angelo has now set his sites on something much smaller: The Ormsby House.

As for “Joshua’s House,” D’Angelo wants it to become a cutting edge facility that includes biometric reading instead of keys, a green energy power plant that would be placed where the defunct ARCO station is now, an aquaponics grow house, a daycare facility for employees, and much more. 

D’Angelo said he has a history in the music business, and he intends to bring the best and biggest musical acts to the showroom. 

In addition, on the first floor which will contain several restaurants encircling the “living room,” D’Angelo has a vision to put in place a culinary art school. The students would come to learn from chefs and serve up food in a school-serviced restaurant, and a few times a year, D’Angelo would bring in celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsey, Guy Fieri, and more. 

The first floor would also include an Ormsby House Museum detailing the history of the building from William Ormsby onward, a first-responders memorial, and a gift shop. 


As for the exterior of the building, D’Angelo said he wants to bring a “Wow!” factor to downtown. 

“I don’t have all the ideas like what color the building would be,” said D’Angelo, “but I want it to be appealing when you drive up. In Las Vegas you see the dancing waters, the Eiffel tower, the Luxor. What do you see when you drive down Carson? Carson is beautiful because it’s old. It’s eclectic, it’s got its little shops. Then you get to the Ormsby House and there’s no wow factor.” 

D’Angelo clarified he wasn’t in the business of turning Carson City into Las Vegas. 


“I don’t want to turn you into Las Vegas,” he said. “You’ll do that on your own in time. I just want to have one property, trick it out, put in some nice waterfalls, trim the trees. What’s the problem?” 

“Carson City is a diamond in the rough,” he continued. “Let me make it into a diamond. This could be the model for the rest of the United States. This is how you turn around life and bring community back into your cities and towns. People want that now because we’re losing it.” 

One of the ways he said his project will help the community is to bring a green-power plant into where the ARCO station currently sits, which would be water powered. The plant would be used to power the Joshua House project, but it could also be used to power the Governor’s Office, the Capitol, the Legislature, or even Carson City as a whole. 

“I’ve got a team of engineers working on it,” said D’Angelo. “Our governor is always pushing green energy, green energy by 2030 for the State of Nevada. Well, here it is. This is new green power. Our governors have been touting that. There’s stuff besides solar. Everybody knows the oil companies and all that, they’re cartels within themselves. They don’t want green energy out.” 

He said what sets him apart from others who want to bring cutting-edge energy technology to the world is that he cannot be bought out by bigger companies who wish to stifle the expansion of green technologies. 

“You take a little guy like me, they can crush me all day long,” said D’Angelo, referring to big oil companies. “If you invent something (in green energy), someone comes along and gives you $100 million for it and the invention never sees the light of day, because they want to keep their profits. But this man can’t be bought. Money means nothing to me. I value human life over paper.”

This green energy could bring Nevada’s ranking up within the United States, said D’Angelo. 

“Nevada has always been on the bottom of everything. Education, this, that. Why can’t we be at the top for once? This building could do that. The Governor said, ‘listen I’ve got an energy board and I want everything green.’ We can do it right across the street from (his) office.”


When asked where the funding for the project is coming from, considering D’Angelo himself is a self-described chaplain, D’Angelo said he has rich benefactors who would appreciate the tax break, and who believe in his project. 

D’Angelo also heads a for-profit business based out of Las Vegas called Joshua’s Ventures International, which he says is used to pay for the non-profits of Joshua’s Community, Living Water Ministries, and Joshua’s Deliverance Ministries.

His ministries are registered in Nevada, New York, and Florida, according to public record.  

Within the “Joshua network,” there are also other corporate entities such as Joshua Ventures Inernational Mining, Inc. and Joshua Ventures International Energy, Inc., Jvl Real Estate Investments, Inc., Jvl Technologies Inc., Joshua’s Acquisitions, Inc. and several others, many of which are no longer active. 

D’Angelo has been associated with fifteen companies, according to public records. 

When asked why he chose Carson City for this project, D’Angelo said it was less about the city itself and more about the Ormsby House building.

“It wasn’t so much about Carson, it was about the building, the property,” said D’Angelo. “You’ve had it empty for 18 years. Let me take it and turn it into something. If I can just take one little piece, just a couple of acres with this building and give people a few hours of happiness, what am I doing wrong?”

As for his opening plans, D’Angelo would like to have a soft opening in the springtime.

“We’ll let people come into the restaurants, or maybe even the showroom,” said D’Angelo. “We’ll let people come in, see the rooms, see what’s going on. It blows me away what people are concerned about. Someone said ‘you’re not going to have $1 biscuits and gravy?’ And I said what, this is the mindset? But maybe for the grand opening we can have $1 biscuits and gravy.”

At this point, D’Angelo said there is a 50/50 chance of his project becoming a reality, and it is in the hands of the Board of Supervisors and the planning commission.

“First I have to pass the powers that be,” he said. “If they don’t give me what I want, I’ll walk.”

D’Angelo said that his reasoning for this response is that if his dream is going to come to fruition, he needs to be able to have control over the project, and not have it in the hands of the Board of Supervisors or the city to be picked over and regulated.

“I recognize the board is in place to make sure everything is safe for the community,” he said. “But in this case, there’s nothing to protect the public from. I think we all want to sit down on Tuesday and come to a ‘Yes’ all around.”

D’Angelo will be meeting with the planning commission on Tuesday for a major planning review in which they will discuss feasibility.