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(LAS CRUCES) -- Area business owners supporting downtown revitalization are coming together for the first ever Downtown Roundtable, a meeting to plan for the future of Las Cruces.
The list of ideas continues to grow and in a few years downtown Las Cruces could look very different.
"It's a process that will evolve with a developer looking at lots of things that could happen. It could be condos downtown, it could be other restaurants, galleries, boutiques, a grocery store, lots of things, all of that has to be with some kind of design and some kind of connected factor," said Delano Lewis, who is heading up the Downtown Roundtable, a group made up of business owners supporting the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership and its efforts at revitalizing the area.
"You have neighborhoods around the Mesquite neighborhood who would like to have input because they're going to be impacted by what happens downtown and then you have those of us who live in the greater Las Cruces who believe in revitalization downtown benefits all of us in the city," he said.
The plan is to figure ways to recruit new business to the area and most importantly keep them there.
"We'll have some very successful business people there that can give us there input on what's worked for them, either here or at different parts of the country and its really a great time for us to learn from them, but also for them to learn from us -- what's happening downtown, what's the timeline going to be with the development that's happening," said Carrie LaTour is the executive director of the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership.
The partnership has a design committee in place and is closely working with city leaders to develop more ideas. Meanwhile, construction downtown has become a good indicator for volunteers that change is already taking place.
"Construction is a good thing. It means the south end of Main Street is opening and it is due to be open in November of 2012. They're on target so I suspect that by Christmas we're going to have everything up and running down here and its taking a while for that infrastructure to be in place have a thru street and I think that's going to be an invitation for more vendors to consider downtown," said LaTour.
The downtown roundtable is open to people that have contributed or want to help the Downtown Las Cruces Partnership revitalize the area. For more information log on to www.downtownlascruces.net.
