Carson City’s taxable sales rose 7.3 percent in March and, despite the construction making life difficult for nearly a dozen downtown eateries and bars, that category reported a 6.7 percent increase for the month over 2015, a legislative year.
Carson’s Food Services and Drinking Places category reported sales of $8.79 million for the month.
But the overall number of $87.2 million was driven by auto sales, the capital’s largest taxable sales generator, which saw a 10.3 percent increase to $23.5 million. General Merchandise Stores were up 5 percent to $16.77 million, offset in part by a 5.4 percent decrease in Building Material sales to $8.5 million.
Storey County, still fueled by the growth of businesses at Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, reported $18.58 million in taxable sales, a 64.4 percent gain over the same month of 2015.
Statewide, total taxable sales hit $4.69 billion in March.
Altogether, 10 of Nevada’s 17 counties reported an increase in March. Churchill, Douglas and Lyon counties were not among them.
Churchill reported $28.1 million in taxable sales, a 12 percent decrease from March 2015. The culprit was the Utilities category which dropped from $8.7 million a year ago to a much more normal $961,165 this March.
Douglas saw a 60 percent decrease in auto sales from $10.5 million to $4.2 million. That completely offset the 4 percent increase to $13.6 million in Douglas’s largest sales generator, Food Services and Drinking Places — the Stateline casinos at south shore — and the 16 percent increase in General Merchandise sales to $8.6 million.
Douglas reported sales of $57.2 million for the month.
Lyon County’s 7.8 percent decrease to $34.2 million came from several places but one of the largest was the 96 percent decrease in the Metal Product Manufacturing category from $4.28 million to $176,361. Nonmetallic Mineral Manufacturing grew more than 50 percent to $782,489.
Washoe County reported a 5.9 percent increase to $645.6 million and Clark County a 2.8 percent increase in taxable sales to $3.5 billion in March.