Their organization is still an informal confederation of downtown business people and other interested citizens, and their proclamation carries no official weight, but a group of about 50 agreed on Wednesday to begin a process to try to entice a community college to locate in downtown Suffolk.

In its second meeting, the Friends of Suffolk, a group organized by Virginia Beach resident and Suffolk developer Ralph Nahra, agreed by voice vote to send letters to the city and to the Virginia Community College System, pitching the downtown area as a location for a new community college campus.

“We strongly recommend … that a community college should be located downtown,” Nahra said, reading the contents of a letter he said he would send to city officials following the meeting.

A downtown campus, he said, would increase foot traffic and result in “happier merchants” in the central business district, and it would result in higher enrollment and easier access for community college students.

Nahra’s motion to send the letter got a quick second from former City Council member Charles Parr, who also owns a variety of properties in the area that could benefit from such a development. Nahra then called for a voice vote, and no votes were cast in opposition to the measure.

Friends of Suffolk first met in December to discuss ways to improve the situation in downtown, and promotion of the area as a place to site a college campus was one of the main topics on Nahra’s agenda.

Although there was a hearty discussion about the idea during the December meeting, there were no questions or comments about it prior to Wednesday’s vote.

Later during Wednesday’s meeting, however, City Council member Mike Duman attempted to assure the gathering that Suffolk’s elected officials had previously expressed their support for having Paul D. Camp Community College work with the city as an ancillary usage for a proposed new library that has since been moved to the back burner as Suffolk struggles to fund secondary educational priorities.

Parr then made it clear that the Friends group has moved forward from that plan and that what’s now under consideration would be a much more complex plan that would make the college campus the center of development, with the city’s library the ancillary project.

“There is a huge amount of support behind this thing,” Nahra told a reporter on Monday. “The key is how to make it happen. We need to revitalize. We need to move a learning center closer to our student population.”

Nahra pointed to places like Old Dominion University and Tidewater Community College’s Norfolk campus, where shops, restaurants and more have sprung up around the campuses.

The Friends organization believes Suffolk would similarly benefit from a downtown college campus, giving the city the opportunity to piggyback on the development to improve cultural offerings and business growth.

Although its high-profile effort is to bring a college downtown, the group also has spent time considering other ways to spur development there.

Establishment of a “Shark Tank”-like investment program that would seek opportunities to support new business ventures downtown was another of Nahra’s ideas discussed at both recent meetings.

On Wednesday, he said he’s already secured commitments for $50,000 from interested investors, and he said he’d like to work with schools in Suffolk to encourage students to bring their ideas to the group of investors.

“We’re trying to create a buzz” about downtown Suffolk, he said, noting that he’d like to get the fund to $100,000 before launching the program.

During a discussion about what should be done to make the downtown area more palatable while these other projects are percolating, those attending had a litany of suggestions. Among them: bring more retail; improve signage, especially for parking; work with landlords to reduce the rent and open up empty storefronts for smaller businesses; entice more people to live downtown; improve nightlife offerings; site a grocery store downtown; improve the streetscapes and lighting; and add more parking.

Nahra told the group that he’d like to set up a small group to engage city officials on those issues.

He also secured their commitment to make the Friends group more official, setting up a business coalition under a name that has not yet been chosen.