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For Immediate Release

Contact: Tammy Westergard, 775-887-2101x1215

Carson City Named #3 in Business Week’s Top 10

Emerging arts community signals significant real estate opportunities

Carson City, Nev. (March 19, 2007) - - In a list of top U.S. cities as best bets for real estate investment, BusinessWeek.com named Carson City number three (between Santa Fe, N.M. and New York City) in a list of ten best places for artists in America. The Feb.26, 2007 online story, Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow reports on healthy real estate returns in cities influenced by artists and the creative class.

According to Bert Sperling, founder and president of Portland (Ore.)-based data collection company and compiler of Sperling’s Best Places, “Artists are the advance guard of what’s hip and cool,” said Sperling. Economists maintain this to be music to investor’s ears.

“Carson City has always valued its arts and culture community. The community’s love of the Brewrey Arts Center, Western Nevada Musical Theater, the Carson City Symphony, the Capital City Arts Initiative and the Sierra Nevada Ballet are prime examples,” said Joe McCarthy, Director of Carson City’s Office of Business Development.

Appreciating the arts offers more than intrinsic rewards. “There’s more to it than art appreciation,” said McCarthy. “Embracing arts and culture creates a healthy economic mix, and that mix is what savvy investors know to be the catalyst for healthy economies in some of the best art cities in the U.S., such as Ashland, Ore.”

Alan Harvey, Chairman of the recently formed Carson City Arts and Culture Coalition (CCACC), a 40 plus member organization serving more than 4,200 visual, performing and literary artists, agrees. “Arts and culture lift a community’s sense of self and level of sophistication; which results in direct economic benefit to the business sectors and community at large,” said Harvey.

Rankings were determined via a variety of economic indicators including, ratio of artistic establishments to population, diversity and concentration of museums, philharmonic orchestras, dance companies, theater troupes, library resources and college arts programs.

The Top Ten:

1) Los Angeles, Calif. 6) Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.

2) Santa Fe, N.M. 7) Nashville, T.N.

3) Carson City, Nev. 8) Boulder, Colo.

4) New York City, N.Y. 9) San Francisco, Calif.

5) Kingston, N.Y. 10) Nassau-Suffolk County, N.Y.