During a Helena City Commission meeting Wednesday, the Helena Civic Center Steering Committee delivered its recommendations on the future of the 100-year-old venue. On March 25, the committee voted 7-2 to recommend that the Helena City Commission "form an advisory board to be focused as a non-profit board of directors and that the non-profit would be responsible for the management of the civic center with a lease agreement with the City of Helena." The recommendation from the volunteer committee comes after more than a year of meetings, research and discussions on the matter of establishing a new advisory board. "In the end, after looking at all of the research Allan (R. Scott) and Andrea (Optiz) in particular did, looking at other models of successful nonprofit management of city-owned venues all across the country ... we reached the conclusion that partnering with a local, homegrown nonprofit entity to operate and manage the civic center captures the best aspects of all the scenarios we studied," Committee Chairwoman Niki Zupanic said during Wednesday's meeting.