Our Initiatives
Almanor Basin Community Consortium
The Almanor Basin Community Consortium was formed in 2019. The Consortium and its sector meetings are to become platforms for the mixing and sharing of ideas, visions and projects of the different organizations, businesses, and peoples of the Lake Almanor Basin to produce a vision for our future, enhance our quality of life, and work toward creative solutions to our current and future challenges.
Chester Town Plaza
The Town Plaza is an initiative for the advancement of community health, education, and cultural and recreational opportunities. The Town Plaza will be a community destination that will feature educational events, music, festivals, craft fairs, children’s activities, cultural performances, and public art.
As an economic development driver, it will contain a public market space that will create opportunities for various food and retail entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. As an event and year-round activities location it will become a regional destination that will bring local residents as well as travelers into the Town of Chester, stimulating the economy of the town.
Protecting Our Assets
There is need to remain active and vigilant to protect some of our most important assets. There are continuing threats to our water quality coming from a decrease in annual snowpack, and the degradation of streams, to the encroachment of other interests on the cold waters of Lake Almanor. Protecting the quality of our lake waters, streams and fisheries will mean raising and granting funds to organizations such as Lake Almanor Watershed Group and the Almanor Fishing Association’s fish hatchery program, among others.
Workforce Housing Initiative
The shortage of housing and shortage of affordable housing is threatening the livelihood and character of our region, our community members, and our businesses. The goal of The Almanor Foundation is to bring people together to accelerate solutions to achievable local housing, supporting short-term and immediate action, while focusing on long-term solutions.
In August 2022 the foundation funded a 6 month project to produce a comprehensive and systematic approach to affordable housing within the Lake Almanor Basin. The path forward will look at each of the stakeholders in the process and evaluate where and when each can affect change toward a shared vision of increasing the affordable housing stock. This process will look to create an educational road map to understand the process of housing from financing to occupancy that reveals the interdependencies of each industry and stakeholder. Our goal through this process is to map the ecosystem that is housing and highlight where change can be made via influence or control of each of the stakeholders.