City Manager Nick Marano lays out Carson City’s downtown plans

Marano lays out plans for city

Funds for commercial corridor upgrades in Carson City will come from three sources with a 40-40-20 percentage split, City Manager Nick Marano said Tuesday.

Marano said for all corridor improvements, 40 percent would come from funds available due to the one-eighth of a penny sales tax hike, 40 percent from sewer and water funds for related and needed underground upgrades, and 20 percent from state or federal grants in hand. He said though downtown Carson Street changes would come first and are a current topic, the phased changes are to spruce up all main business corridors.

“This isn’t just the downtown,” he told a noon luncheon Rotary Club audience. He said the downtown phase. which on Nov. 6 goes in conceptual design before the Board of Supervisors, is first in line but the overall plan “encompasses every commercial corridor in town.”

He said the grants involved total about $6 million. Figuring that amount as 20 percent, it means $24 million of local revenue in the few years will go for upgrading downtown, north and south Carson Street, as well as East William Street.

The city manager also briefly went over the conceptual plans for the downtown phase, which calls for making it enticing to pedestrians along with other modes of transport.

“It is a complete streets concept,” he said. The downtown conceptual design envisions three lanes of vehicular traffic, the middle one for left turns, bicycle lanes on each side and one or two pull-in parking slots in each block on the east and west sides. The median would go, and sidewalks would be widened to 12 feet where there are parking slots or 20 feet where there are none.

Marano talked in addition about the animal shelter and multi-purpose athletic center (MAC) plans and financing, which in each case are partly funded from the one-eighth of a penny city sales tax hike.

He said the shelter cost is pegged at $3.9 million, with $200,000 from private sector donations and the rest from bonding backed by the sales tax revenue stream. He said the MAC will cost $8.3 million, with $2.1 million based on the recently enacted tax hike and the rest from Question 18 quality of life money already on hand. The Q-18 program was approved in the 1990s by Carson City voters and this was one of the final projects in that program.

During a question-answer segment after the talk, Marano was asked about completion of the I-580 freeway bypass to link with U.S. Highway 50 at Carson City’s south edge. He said city government is working with the Nevada Department of Transportation and understands bids for the final segment, from the Fairview Lane exit south, could come next month and target date for completion would be two years from December.