To help draw out that potential, the city's Downtown Advisory Group is recommending a new zone for downtown to help the city regulate what businesses locate there. The new zone, to be voted on next month, would restrict manufacturing and production businesses such as printers or commercial bakeries, thrift stores and "beer parlors" from locating in the heart of the city. Additionally, churches, bingo halls and other large gathering places would become conditional uses for which a special permit would be necessary.

Encouraged in the ordinance would be restaurants, retail and repair shops, second-floor apartments, professional offices and theaters, according to the city. Other allowed uses would include dance halls, skating rinks and bowling alleys.

The consultants, not immediately available for comment, have said they will complete their analysis by the end of February and present it to the city before the middle of April. Some possibilities mentioned to a reporter for the Longview Daily News include mounted police and storefront entertainers such as actors and artists. Prepaid tourist packages -- such as a visit to Mount St. Helens, dinner in a downtown restaurant, a show at the Columbia Theater and a few hours of gambling and dancing at Cadillac Ranch – also was thrown out as marketing possibility.