Carson City Planning Commission covers plan action items

A 2015 Master Plan annual report and direction for action items next year won approval from the Carson City Planning Commission Wednesday.

The 2006 Master Plan, according to Community Development Director Lee Plemel, doesn’t yet need significant altering and he cited much progress on downtown action items for this year, with more work on related items in 2016. This year’s items relates to work on the downtown Carson Street makeover, which is about designed and ready to start next year, while 2016 includes work on downtown parking and helping businesses, events, marketing and promotion.

Commission Chairman Paul Esswein called those 2016 goals ambitious, saying neither short- and long-term parking questions nor herding businesses seem like particularly easy tasks.

Member Victor Castro, who said he worked on the Los Angeles Master Plan when he lived there, asked Plemel how long the 2006 Master Plan took to draft, vet publicly and adopt. Plemel said the process took 18 months or two years.

Plemel also traced planning matters over the past decade, noting how well things were going in 2005-06, a subsequent recessionary fall off in activity, and some stirrings lately. Graphs he used showed a bubble in assessed property valuation that developed in 2007 for a few years, then fell off until an upturn was recorded the past three years.

“It looks like, perhaps, that’s starting to turn around,” he said, mentioning both residential and commercial upticks.

The commission approved the report and action items unanimously and sent it on to the Board of Supervisors. Members also approved changes for about 20 acres of Open Space near C-Hill in west Carson City and a slice of land that would become part of a multi-use path along the I-580 freeway near Lompa Lane on the east side.

The property near C-Hill includes two parcels, one 19 acres and the other 1.8 acres. City government purchased them in 2013 from the Patricia R. Potter family for $225,000. The new designation means it won’t be developed, which was the intention at the time of purchase. Potter, who died in 2013, was active in the community and served on the Parks and Recreation Commission.

Open Space Administrator Ann Bollinger said during testimony on that item the Nevada Land Trust is purchasing 45.5 acres in the upper Ash Canyon area of rural Carson City, also to preserve it as open space.

The commission also favored abandonment of what originally would have been a cul de sac area near Bethlehem Lutheran Church and School on Ivy Street, but included conditions requiring drainage problems be handled first.