The Carson City Planning Department and Office of Business Development took up the charge to revisit the Carson City Master Plan and from that Envision Carson City was adopted by the Carson City Board of Supervisors April 6, 2006. From this the Redevelopment Authority formally launched Downtown Answers in November, 2007 as a business-led and institutional-led collaborative effort to implement the bold and exciting long-range vision for downtown Carson City. The Downtown Answers participants are creating, communicating and cultivating a unified vision, providing regional context between the city core and surrounding areas to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal and assist with mitigation of issues as they arise.
While purposely led by the Carson City Office of Business Development, under the direction of the Redevelopment Authority Chair, the Downtown Answers process has involved a broad cross-section of the community through a variety of methods.
A snapshot of downtown
The process began with a high-profile kickoff event September 2005. Invitations were sent to business and community leaders and more than a thousand residents participated in a two-day professionally directed “design studio” to provide a consensus for the future look of downtown Carson City. More than 50,000 data points of feedback were submitted; people included everything from the very small (curbs and gutters) to the very large (plazas and buildings).
Design
Winston and Associates, an urban planning and landscape architecture company from Boulder, Colorado, focused efforts on the feedback from the visioning charrette and brought together their leading urban design, planning, landscape architecture, real estate, business and environmental planning team to formulate the 3-D animated rendering of a future walkable mixed-use downtown Carson City.
Public Involvement
June 7 & 8, 2006 Envision Carson City presented “Downtown Carson City, Your Vision Revealed” and reached out to citizens to again generate feedback to the ideas that were forming that were defining the vision for downtown.
Members of the Envision Carson City team made hundreds of presentations to various groups, allowing residents to react to images of what makes an ideal downtown.
The public involvement process found there was a high level of support for a healthy mixed-use downtown.
Key Partners
In addition to the business, technical and community leaders, several entities supported the downtown vision: the Carson City Chamber of Commerce, the Carson City Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Northern Nevada Development Authority and Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, the latter two by virtue of Carson City’s downtown plan walking in step with two regional economic development initiatives, Target 2010 and eNVision Northern Nevada spurred by AngelouEconomics.
The Urban Land Institute
The Urban Land Institute selected Downtown Carson City to be the focus of a Project Analysis Session at its 2007 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. A two-hour session from seven ULI panelists offered downtown vision review. Chaired by William H. Hudnut, III, Senior Resident Fellow, ULI/Joseph C. Canizaro Chair for Public Policy, former four-term Mayor of Indianapolis and Congressman, author, public speaker, TV commentator and think tank fellow – panelists offered high praise for the downtown vision and immediate, interim and long term recommended steps all of which are impetus for ongoing execution.
