Carson City, on many levels, is quietly sophisticated and its citizens have long recognized that a creative environment is essential to an energetic and engaged community.
Since the city's founding almost 150 years ago, community leaders have gathered to take stock of downtown's development at key moments. In the past 50 years, three influential efforts, as well as today's Downtown Answers, have guided downtown's development history.
Redevelopment Authority, 1988 As Carson City entered its second century, a group of visionary community leaders formed the Carson City Redevelopment Authority. Pledging to address downtown.
Redevelopment Citizens Committee,
By the late 1980s, downtown was in need of new energy and focus. The Carson City Board of Supervisors called for the community to support a vision for the downtown and pursue it consistently. Among other things, a façade improvement program led to the redevelopment of 28 previously shut buildings.
Envision Carson City, 2006
As a comprehensive blueprint that provides guidance on where and how the community will grow in the next 20 years, Envision Carson City was completed in 2006. Most communities revisit and update their comprehensive plan every five to seven years to ensure that it continues to meet the community’s vision and goals for the future. The first Carson City Master Plan was adopted in 1958. Since then, the Master Plan updates have been adopted in 1977, 1978, 1983 and 1996. The focus of the 2006 plan, for the first time ever, incorporates various Master Plan Elements (adopted at different times over the years) into one policy document. The goals and policies in the Envision Carson City 2006 represent compact urban growth and mixed-use activity centers – especially within the downtown. Three years of scenario analysis, research and involvement from more than 18,000 citizens culminated in Envision Carson City, which details strategies to create a community design, create an economic plan, create a land use plan, create a recreation plan, create a streets and highways plan, preserve critical lands, promote water conservation and clean air, improve public transportation systems, historical properties preservation, public buildings, services and facilities, safety, and provide housing choices for all residents.
Downtown Answers, 2007
As the implementation vehicle of Envision Carson City and because the new I-580 Freeway will complete a “ring road” around Carson City and free downtown from the chains of car and truck traffic, a new age of potential for unprecedented investment in the downtown area prompted elected officials, civic and business leaders, and many others, to consider the broader implications of an array of significant, but individual, developments. Downtown Answers has been created to be the glue to link those disparate parts together in a visionary whole. In order to give strength to such pursuits the community has aligned to create Downtown Answers, whose affiliates include the Carson City Downtown Consortium and the Downtown Carson City Institutional Alliance. Each entity, from different directions on parallel courses, seeks to intersect commerce with culture through funding, visibility initiatives, access to new resources and political voice.
