Letters to the editor for Thursday, May 5, 2016

Renovation is what downtown needs

Do you remember when going downtown was fun? I don’t, but I’ve only lived here 16 years. Other than the Taste of Downtown, and Fridays at 3rd, there isn’t much to draw you in.

Retail has struggled. We’ve had some great shops, but they can’t seem to compete with Reno. I had a gift store for nine years, the last four being in Carson City. Although we had a great following, once the last leg of I-580 opened up, we saw our sales drop 17 percent over the holiday season, which in retail is where you’re supposed to see black.

There’s a lot of grumbling right now over the work being done on Main Street. The majority of the work is infrastructure, and necessary for you to be able to flush your toilets and have clean water coming out of your tap. The downtown project is a gamble, but we have to find a way to bring people downtown to shop and eat. Otherwise we are going to be a ghost town once the freeway is completed.

My granddaughter is only 9, but I look ahead to the day she spreads her wings and goes off to college. Hopefully we will have a thriving community that she will want to come back to and raise her family.

Change is hard. Doing nothing is easy. It takes work to be involved in your community and give back. My husband and I give countless hours to the community. We don’t expect thanks. We call that our duty as citizens of Carson City. For you naysayers out there, what are you doing to make a difference?

Susie Messina

Carson City