A city volunteer group will talk about its ideas Thursday concerning how to make downtown Carson City a better place for visitors, businesses and residents.
The Carson City Downtown Consortium created by Supervisor Robin Williamson studied how housing, business, public safety and other areas could be improved in downtown and will present ideas developed over several months to the city board of supervisors.
Williamson said she hopes the board will endorse the ideas and direct city staff to work on how to implement them, but the most impressive part of the group is how volunteers got together to make downtown better.
They need only a small commitment of money and resources from the city, she said, but that small amount is needed.
"It's important to let the volunteers know that all their hard work is not in vain," she said.
Downtown had a great year already with events such as the farmer's market, and the group wants to improve on that success, she said.
"It's private people saying, 'We want to work with the city and improve the downtown,'" she said.
The volunteers who looked specifically at how to improve business in downtown found a wide range of opinions when they talked to businesses, said Chris MacKenzie, who led those volunteers.
He said many people see there are problems and they want to fix them, and "the basic thing was: Why isn't the downtown better?"
The general conclusion the people who looked at business reached was that businesses and property owners have to be the ones to improve downtown, he said, and the city will be there to help push along that momentum.
"It's just a matter of putting all the pieces together and being more business driven," he said.
Tammy Westergard, project coordinator, praised the volunteers but declined to discuss any of their ideas.
"I don't want to talk about anything and preempt anything that these hard-working citizens are going to talk about on Thursday," she said.
- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.