RDA funds distributed to area businesses

The city’s Redevelopment Agency, composed of the five City Council members, met Tuesday to award community redevelopment grants to several local business and nonprofit agencies.

Two inns, Oasis Boutique Motel and Boulder Inn & Suites, were awarded funds to help pay for signage and other improvements to the entrances. Art in the Park was awarded funds, along with the Boulder City Tourist Commission. The members created an unfunded revolving loan fund required by new legislation, Assembly Bill 417.

Each year the city, through the agency, distributes $500,000 for operations and improvements of businesses and nonprofit groups within the redevelopment zone.

Although the grant approvals were largely routine, considerable attention was given to the Boulder City Tourism Commission, which has received an annual $50,000 grant for tourism promotion since 2005. In anticipation of business losses caused by construction of Interstate 11 to bypass Boulder City, Mayor Roger Tobler had comments for commission spokesman and former council member Mike Pacini.

Tobler, who has formed an informal stakeholders group to focus on issues caused by the I-11 bypass around Boulder City, said “we do need the tourist board to be a part of all this. It’s in the early stages, but we want to include everyone.”

“There’s a fear about the tourism traffic,” Pacini acknowledge. “We commissioned a traffic study that determined that two of every 10 cars passing through stop here.”

He said that “as we market to the Las Vegas Valley, we’ve moved away from print media, moving to radio and then TV.”

“We’re eight years ahead of where we would have been” had the tourism board not been formed, he added.

“We’re going to have to have a well-oiled machine to make sure tourism gets here,” Mayor Pro-tem Cam Walker interjected at one point.

“Besides just events,” the mayor said, “I think we need to talk about The World for a Day.” He was referring to the use of that slogan in an advertising campaign to get valley residents to visit Boulder City.

“Now we need to figure out how to capture the Arizona traffic headed to Vegas,” he said.

Oasis Boutique Motel, in business since 1952, was awarded $3,696 as a 30 percent contribution toward improving the entrance and signage. Boulder Inn & Suites won an extension on a previously awarded $50,000, as a 50 percent grant for a new sign. Art in the Park was awarded $5,000 to help defray advertising expenses.

Tobler said the event benefits not only the Boulder City Hospital Foundation, but businesses throughout the city. The Tourism Commission was given its annual $50,000 grant to develope advertising campaigns for Boulder City tourism.