MONTROSE – There’s a new website in town. It’s not only linking Montrose County and the City of Montrose, but other local entities to create a “more unified web presence for Montrose,” said city spokesman David Spear.

Spear and assistant city manager Scott Sellers came up with the idea about a year ago and worked at convincing others to go along with them. Many refused, but the core group that also includes the Montrose Recreation District, the Montrose Convention and Visitors Center and the Montrose Economic Development Council is just the beginning, Spear said.

The beginning is pretty impressive. Log onto the new site at www.montrose.org, and you’ll see a sharply designed page with a welcome to the “new virtual front door to Montrose,” city news items and calendar of events.

Links appear at the top of the page for visitors, business and resident services, along with “Explore Montrose.”

A click on that button links to the official websites of the portal partners, each of which has been redesigned to reflect the new website portal.

Spear said unified navigation options under the “Explore Montrose” tab are part of what makes the site special. By using the tab on each partner site, visitors can navigate between partner sites and the portal itself to locate information sources.

“They don’t have to open new window or lose the ability to go back to where they were before,” he said.

The portal and new websites were developed by Civic Plus of Manhattan, Kan., a company that specializes in municipal websites and has developed hundreds throughout the country.

“We want to present an image of unity and professionalism for Montrose so that when people come to the VBC site to plan a vacation or explore the idea of coming here, they can explore other aspects of our community, all visible from the original visit on the VBC site,” he said.

Several groups were invited to be part of the new web portal, and will still be welcome if they fit the overall goals, Spear said. The Montrose Chamber of Commerce, the fire district, library district, school district were all invited to join but turned it down. Others, like the Montrose Area Merchants Association, were not invited to join because their appeal was not so much to visitors but to locals, Spear said.

Each page of the new portal and website are professionally designed and include local photographs, which each entity must supply, along with information to appear online.

Once the sites were designed, the content became the responsibility of each organization, Spear said.

“The platform for these websites allows us to keep content fresh and to manage it and to keep advancing the services we present on the web,” he said.