NATCHEZ — Don’t close your eyes to use your imagination.

Open them wide and look around, imagining what can be in the streets right in front of you.

That’s what organizers of the third Natchez Possibilities Tour will be asking residents, outsiders and potential business owners alike to do when they walk through the downtown area next month.

This year’s tour, a planned “open house” for the downtown district, will highlight 10 properties up for sale or lease in the downtown area, and will coincide with the monthly Second Saturday downtown events Jan. 9.

The goal of the tour is to give people a chance to look in on properties they have never seen — or maybe have always been curious about — and get them thinking about how those properties can be used in an entrepreneurial way, organizer Ruth Nichols said.

Inside the buildings will be displays or performances by local artists, which tour organizers have termed “creative entrepreneurs.”

“We want to turn it into a discovery of downtown properties available, and of creative unique individuals in our community,” Nichols said.

“Anybody who is creative — whether they write, sing, make jewelry, if they make gifts, candles, anything at all that is a creative act they do for sale — we want to spotlight them that day. Natchez-Adams County is such a creative area, and we feel like there are a lot of people who have never been discovered. We want to discover and publicize everything in the community.”

Having the artists in the spaces also helps get people’s imaginations going as they get a good look at the spaces in question for the first time, organizer Aimee Guido said.

“It is really about the building, but it is an added touch to have somebody showing off their work, and it really helps to stage the room so it doesn’t just look like a great big open space,” she said.

The tour itself is a self-guided exercise, but the real estate agents who represent the properties will be there to help answer any questions potential buyers may have.

“Since we have started this, with a lot of our Realtors, it just takes one email and saying, ‘Are you on board?’ and they are ready,” Guido said.

“There are not a lot of places that can say they are having an open house with multiple Realtors on board.”

The idea for the tour started on the Fourth of July 2013, when Nichols took a walk through downtown and started counting vacant buildings. At the time, she counted 40, and that November and the following one Alcorn State University and Natchez Inc. partnered to highlight some of those spaces.

While the past Possibilities Tours — which operated under the banner of “Turning Deserted Spaces into Dynamic Places” — cannot lay claim to being the moment when a given space was leased, numerous buildings formerly on the tour now house thriving businesses, Nichols said, and new properties not featured on the tour have been added.

And this year’s tour is just as much about supporting those businesses that have moved in as it is about attracting new businesses, she said.

That’s why the tour was moved to January, a time that is traditionally slow for downtown merchants.

“So much is starting to change as people are discovering, renting and moving in (the downtown area),” Nichols said. “There is so much activity on Main and Franklin streets. There are little things popping up, and we need to continue to support all of those as a community.”

After the holidays, the January second Saturday is “a perfect time to get out of the house and roam the streets of Natchez, because the downtown folks will be having Second Saturday,” Nichols said.

“Who knows what you will discover in one of these buildings? It is all about making our community bigger and better and stronger.”

Nichols said artists interested in being a part of the tour should contact her at 601-870-6000.