Report adds aerial views to local business perspective

Want to know any bit of minutia about the vibrant Washoe County economy?

It's all in the annual Business Activity Report, just released by the Nevada Small Business Development Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The $295 report includes data on demographics, traffic, retail sales, employment, and residential and commercial activity for the Reno-Sparks area.

Data is reported for 15 sub-regions of Washoe County, as well as the overall Reno-Sparks metropolitan area, making it easy to compare various parts of the region.

New this year are aerial photos behind the traffic-count maps. Plus, the maps are crisply printed, rather than fuzzily photocopied.

"We put a ton of work into making the maps more refined," says Brian Bonnenfant, GIS program manager at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. The new maps also include aerial views and hillside shading.

Sub-regions included in the report are:

Airport, Kietzke, Meadowood, North Valleys, Northeast Reno, Northeast, Sparks, Northwest Reno, Park Lane, South Reno, South Virginia, Southwest Reno, West Sparks, Sparks Industrial, and Sparks redevelopment areas.

The report contains demographics, real estate data, firms, employment, wages, retail sales, traffic counts, residential construction and proposed commercial activity.

The document is used by governments, title companies, libraries, builders, and developers. Last year, 30 were sold.

For future reports, says Bonnenfant, his department is working on data to encompass the entire region, reaching far as Fallon, Hawthorne and Winnemucca.

The Nevada Small Business Development Center is a statewide resource for business assistance, providing a unique array of services, expertise and training in all areas including launching, growing, and developing a business.

Its' Geographic Information Services department serves the State of Nevada with custom market analyses designed to help a business select a location for operations, understand current market trends and predict where the local economy is headed.

The first report was released in 1997.