Communities around this country are doing everything they can to position themselves ahead of the pack in their economic development efforts. It is very common for a city to create and share marketing “propaganda” touting the many reasons why their particular community is the best place in the free world for investment. We are not saying this isn’t an important element, but there is a problem with relying on this approach. Our firm has heard from those receiving these materials. In many cases they don’t even take the time to look at them, no matter how glossy, slick, or gaudy they may be. What retailers are looking for in a city is the answer to one simple question… “Will our company make a profit in this market?” If the answer to that question is yes, then the follow-up question is… “How efficiently can we get open and get our goods to market?”

While it is important for you to have accurate, current data on your market for you to execute an educated and informed development effort, you need to know that retailers and restaurants will come armed with their own data. They are experts at researching and analyzing markets, and having demographics that meet their requirements is only the first step. What they are looking for in their next site is a community willing to partner with them and help to ensure a good return on their investment. To show retailers you are ready to form partnerships, a city needs to take action internally as well as externally.

Externally, cities need to hire professionals to recruit new investment. The retail world is a tight knit community, and you need someone who is known and respected within the development arena. We have often been surprised at how quickly news and reputations can pass through the retail community. Having an advocate for your community within this world is a necessity. Internally, communities need to focus on making the development process as seamless and painless as possible by eliminating the obstacles. The regulatory environment in a city can quickly become a quagmire of bureaucratic red tape, delays, fees, and any number of other nightmares for the development community. The most troubling thing to me about this is that most cities don’t have the slightest clue that they have a problem in this area. Streamlining the development process should be at the forefront of concerns for any team of progressive city administrators.

Cities should treat retailers and developers like they were welcomed customers. I’m not talking about loosening development standards and lowering expectations. I’m talking about finding creative ways to partner with the private sector. This partnership will help to improve quality of life for your citizens, create sales tax revenue for your city budgets, and stop retail leakage caused by your citizens leaving town to purchase goods and services that they would love to buy at home.

Call us. We can help.

Written by
Rickey Hayes
Retail Attractions, LLC

In our last two blog posts we discussed how local politics play a big part in retail and economic development for cities, especially when communities have to compete for every advantage in these days of growing expenses and declining revenues. As we mentioned before, the model for retail development in cities has changed radically. Much stricter guidelines and more scrutiny at each level of the process is resulting in far less growth and causing cities that need and desire to grow their retail base to think in new ways.

Gambling on the future is always a risky thing, but it has always been a part of the risk of development. Betting on the cycle is fun and profitable if you get it right, and a killer if you get it wrong. The good news is that there are some encouraging signs in the retail arena. Bookstores, and electronics retailers are suffering, but retailers like T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Petco, and almost all the “dollar” stores are seeing strong growth. In some parts of the country, retailers are still struggling and the evidence indicates that consumers are still sensitive to pricing and that people for the most part are shopping for bargains and the greatest value for their money.

We are seeing some grocery growth across the region, and, because of the economy’s effect on the housing industry, many grocery chains are still very cautious and are taking advantage, as are lots of other retailers and restaurants, looking at 2nd generation space, infill, and redevelopment opportunities. In some markets, not in all, department store closings have created caverns in malls and in power and strip centers that have led to redevelopment challenges for owners. In certain areas, de-malling will benefit both owners and consumers as new retail growth creates new challenges to find exciting and more efficient shopping experiences for communities and consumers.

Across the board, there are many challenges to retail growth. Without healthy and sustained job growth, retail may survive but certainly new growth will be needed to cause it to thrive. Retail Attractions has always preached that new retail growth in cities gives them a boost in recruiting new job opportunities. Retailers are all concerned about internet sales opportunities, both in relation to their own increased sales, and negatively as to how those online sales pinch their traditional real estate models. New efforts to make the collection of sales taxes for city governments easier on internet sales may be good for cities, but they are increasingly becoming more tangled in the political winds at the federal level.

Last but not least, cities should not be shocked when retailers in many genres begin to downsize their boxes to become as efficient as possible. This is already happening in many of our client cities. Cities should assist retailers with all available means to help them improve their efficiency and over-all sales per square foot. Justice (a clothing outlet targeting girls aged 7-14), for example, plans to open 55 stores in the US, but also plans to remodel over 40 locations. Old Navy has already remodeled numerous stores to downsize and re-fit into smaller spaces.

Retail Attractions has relationships with retail and restaurant tenants and would love to help your community market itself to retail growth. Cities need to learn the valuable lesson of doing what they do best, which hopefully is building new infrastructure for growth, providing government services to their citizens, and creating proactive policies for growth and sustainability. Let a professional do the work of marketing your community to the national retailers. It’s more efficient, and more productive.

Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Written by
Rickey Hayes
Retail Attractions, LLC

As we said in the last blog post, local politics play a big part in retail and economic development for cities. Over the past several years federal politics, crazy as they are, have spawned a trickle-down effect that has flowed from the federal politics into state, regional, and local governments. Communities that were able to govern in relative unity a few years back are now experiencing bitter partisanship and radical thinking. When cities are competing to attract sales tax producing retail development to their city limits, they cannot afford to have dissension in their local politics. It’s hard enough to foster growth when everyone is working in a unified and efficient manner. With competition more fierce than ever, retailers and restaurants that are looking for new sites are definitely looking for the “low-hanging” fruit. They want markets that are the easiest, simplest, and produce the biggest bang for their investment dollars.

Between 2003 and 2006, big box retail stores were doing 100-200 new deals a year, and the junior anchors were equally as aggressive. Big box anchored power centers and retail developments were being built all over the place. Financing was simple, banks were cooperative and throwing money at retail deals. Brokers were making tons of money. Times were great. Not today. In these tough, lean economic times, many of the big boxes are not even considering new sites, and the ones that are will just do one or two a year. In the past, all it took for a communities to have an excellent chance for new retail deals was showing residential growth in their markets. Today it takes a special circumstance to get the attention of the retail and restaurant site selectors. In this highly competitive market, cities are competing for their very existence, and suburban communities circling a core urban area are competing amongst themselves for retail goods and services for their growing residential areas.

Where a retailer might have been willing to work with difficult local politics in the past, in this market unstable or volatile local politics can have a negative effect on retail deals and slow or even stop development. Cities need to consider the impact of their reputation on the watching world. Folks in the retail business talk to each other. Developers discuss markets over coffee. Retailers discuss how a smoothly a deal went over lunch. It is imperative for cities need to get their ducks in a row and share their retail potential with the development world. They need to be vocal about partnering with the private sector with incentives, development agreements and partnerships. They need to streamline the regulatory environment and perhaps even get into the real estate business to control the use of prime development areas. In addition, local bodies need ensure their community has a reputation for being politically unified with pro-business attitude. A reputation like that will go a long way in these competitive times.

It goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway… Communities need to hire an independent, experienced, well-respected third party consulting firm to market them to the retail world. Hiring a consultant shows the development world your community is serious about growth and is taking the first steps to making it happen. Retail Attractions is proud to represent communities across the county in their development efforts. When your community is ready to take the next step give us a call at 918-376-6707. We are ready when you are.

Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Written by
Rickey Hayes
Retail Attractions, LLC

This year has been an amazing year for Retail Attractions. We have seen positive impact in all of our client cities. As 2011 comes to a close and I reminisce over the last year’s scope of work, I am both excited and concerned about what is ahead for communities, large and small, across the country. On one hand, I am excited about the potential that is waiting for communities that really have a grasp on what it takes to market themselves and get noticed by investors while 43,000 other cities across the country are trying to capture the same attention. Good times are in store for many cities in 2012. Increased revenues through sales tax, new residential and retail development, and improved quality of life are all possible. City governments must be willing to take a look at reality and see what is missing, or see what is actually taking place, and be prepared to take an honest and realistic look at what is going to have to happen to change their current circumstances. If a city is willing to do that, they are going to be pleasantly surprised when they see that change is possible. One thing is for sure, if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to keep getting what you always got.

On the other hand, I see some really tough times coming for lots of communities as well. In recent months, many communities across the country have fallen victim to ultra conservative ideology that has trickled down to the local administrations because of political activism spawned at higher levels of government. In any political realm, it is inevitable that differences of opinion are going to rise. That is the beautiful thing about democracy. It works well when the diversity in local political ideologies have at the core of their belief systems the overall good of the community. If the goal is to improve the overall quality of life in a local setting, and everybody is working together for the common good, then differing opinions on how to reach the goals make life fun and exciting. However, if the goal is not to fix what is wrong and build consensus but to stir up more unrest, more dissension, then this ideology can get in the way of progress and may cause communities to turn away from opportunities that they might not get again. Our total scope of work in our client cities is improving the quality of life, improving revenues, and improving the way cities do business in terms of retail development. Every community has a story to tell. It only takes three things to improve the quality of life in any city: VISION, UNIFIED EFFORT, and FUNDING. In most cases, funding change is relatively easy. But creating vision is tougher. And getting people to gather around a dream or a vision and work hard to get it done is tougher still. But it can and should be done.

As overwhelming as this list seems, it is all necessary to make your community the most attractive destination possible to retailers looking to expand. Competition is fierce. If you don’t want to be left out, you need to do the same. Retail Attractions can help you put your best foot forward. We provide a wide range of services to help you turn your vision into your reality.

Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Something probably needs to be said here about the political climate in communities since more and more local governments seem to not be able to get along or all get on the same page. Our firm works with all sizes of cities and all types of city governments. I can show you case study after case study and the evidence is overwhelming that unity in purpose and unity in vision sets a city apart from the pack. Elected officials have my utmost respect when they have the best interest of their constituents at heart. But when they are there with a personal agenda or after personal gain they should be recalled. Bottom line is this…political infighting and instability stops development. One of the foundational reasons our firm has been successful is that we believe in what we are doing. Recruiting retailers and restaurants to serve the needs of communities is good for cities. It is good in terms of generating and growing revenues, both sales tax and ad valorem, and it improves the overall quality of life in a city. If those governing your town are not interested in improving revenues and improving the quality of life of your citizens, you need to move.

Recently in a meeting with a city council, city staff, and EDC staff for a mid-size city, the EDC director said that over the past year their staff had sent over 250 letters directly to retailers asking them to come to town, and that out of all that work they had only gotten one reply back. I quickly asked what the reply was. The EDC director said that the one retailer that had replied simply said “No.” Retail and restaurant real estate departments get bombarded with city and chamber of commerce propaganda almost on a daily basis. Our network of retail and real estate relationships is open and receptive each time we call regarding potential new markets and are quick to direct us to their growth plans that involve our client cities. Furthermore, many retailers approach US about their growth plans for our perspective and opinions about where the most progressive and dynamic markets are. All cities have retail potential. They may not have the same potential, but they have some potential. Large or small, urban or suburban, micropolitan, or rural “one traffic light” communities…all cities have the potential to grow revenues and upgrade the quality of life for their citizens. Let us help you.

Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.

What does the retail recruitment process look like? It looks like any other relationship based endeavor. The first key to success is to know who to contact, and preferably, have a good relationship with that individual or group. Lots of retailers have generic mail boxes where all real estate related correspondence is funneled. Good luck with that approach. Knowing the right person is the key to getting your city’s market data into hands that actually have the power to influence decisions. We know retailers, their corporate real estate people, and the various groups of brokers around the country that they use to represent them in growth markets. Sometimes one representative will be the contact for a large geographical area, other groups will have a team of brokers and site selectors working deals for a state or a region. The thing to remember is that they are people who are busy, have families, and go to work each day just like you and me. It takes patience to stay after them until you get a convenient moment to talk about new sites. You can contact them daily with elaborate marketing material for month after month, and you may never get your city on the radar for new development opportunities. On the other hand, one phone call or meeting at the right time, with the right person, can result in a successful retail deal for your community, with no marketing material involved. We’ve experienced it many times. Again… It’s all about relationships. We discuss retail sites and the markets of our client cities daily by phone, by email, and in person. We attend the ICSC conferences held around the country and introduce our clients directly to the retailers.

The recruiting process takes patience and tenacity. A retailer or restaurant may tell you that they have no interest in a market or a community at the beginning of a year and then six months later be aggressively trying to get into that area. A retail or restaurant entity may have limited real estate personnel and simply may not have the time to look at a specific deal or a specific market today, but will warehouse sites or locations for future growth or for the next development cycle. We interact daily with the retail world and those who make a living in this industry, and have proven strategies for getting communities pushed to the top of the lists.

Check back next week to find out what your city can do to encourage retail development.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.

Any city that is interested in growing their retail base should take a look at how they handle the development procedure at the entitlement level. Over the last four years of serving cities in several states, one of the areas where there is always room for improvement is in the bureaucratic arm of the planning and community development department’s development and entitlement process. Our firm works with developers from around the country who tell horror stories of arbitrary and capricious treatment at the hands of an inspector or a planner that costs them time and money and causes serious delay to or in the worst case scenario, even the death of a project. Now please don’t think that I am against good planning and high standards of development. That is NOT the case. My job is to get the cities we are fortunate to work in ready to market themselves to sales tax producing retailers and restaurants, and one of the very worst positions a city can find itself in is to have the reputation of not being “development friendly.” What we are looking for is a balanced position where development standards can be held at a high level but there can also be a streamlined and efficient process where developers and investors are treated like customers and not treated like the enemy. Consider the amount of expense and risk a developer has in a new retail project, any city issues or slowdowns cost him time and money. The issues are different from city to city but no matter how perfect the setting is there will be issues. Whether its problems with the real estate, stormwater detention or retention, FEMA issues, topography issues, zoning and annexation disputes, sewer and water line problems, environmental / DEQ issues, limits of no access limitations; the list goes on and on. Local development philosophies do affect development. Cities that are geared and prepared for growth and development have a distinct advantage.

Something we often experience with cities is that they are shocked at the amount of time the retail process takes. We tell city officials who are really serious about retail development that they need to understand, from the very beginning, that the process is usually extremely slow and tedious. Most people really don’t get that point. If your city is not on the national radar currently you may be three years or more from actually seeing new retail and new revenue. If retailers have interest in your market and really want to get there, it still may take eighteen months to two years or more. Again, it takes a long time. On the other hand, once a retailer or restaurant pulls the trigger on a site, they need to get there, get the site through the entitlement process, get the site work done and a building built and get their goods and services to market as soon as possible. It gets confusing if you aren’t familiar with the process. This is the precise reason that cities do not need to wait until next month or next fiscal year or next year’s budget to get in the game.

Check back next week to see what the process looks like.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.

In a past life I was a police officer. When I was preparing to enter that profession I naively presumed that if they realized how bright I was and recognized my considerably advanced skill level, that I would immediately be placed in an administrative position… Boy was I wrong! They wouldn’t even give me any bullets until I had completed nine months of intensive training and preparation. I know you are dying to know what this has to do with the process of recruiting retail to your city. Well, let me tell you: Communities all over the country are beginning to realize that they are simply not prepared to bring national retail goods and services to their citizens and maybe more importantly, they are realizing that they are missing the considerable sales tax revenues that the retail growth adds to their bottom lines. Preparation is a crucial part in the process. If you were selling a house, you would want the house as clean and polished as possible before you presented it. But what if you are trying to sell a city? How does your city show? How does your city’s website portray your community? How do outside investors see your community? What kind of development and growth philosophy do your city leaders have? One thing is for sure…Cities that aren’t growing are decaying, and in today’s competitive environment, a decaying city isn’t going to win the war for attention.

Every community should have a basic knowledge of who lives there and who shops there. City administrators should have a basic understanding of the people they serve: their age, income, education, ethnicity, employment status, and family makeup. Communities should have an idea of who owns the developable tracts of real estate and have some sort of a strategic land use plan. Knowledge of flood plain data and other environmental concerns is always helpful. Believe me, you would be very surprised how a little knowledge of basic information will save tremendous amounts of time and money when the focus in the community turns to retail recruitment. Defining the city’s trade area is a little more technical and requires some knowledge of key factors such as traffic flow patterns, other population centers, and the dynamics of other localized clusters of retail development. Unless you can get your community’s data “inside the ropes” to the decision makers in the retail industry, your city will most likely get swallowed up by the 43,300 other US zip codes who think their local retail potential is better than yours.

So now your interested… check back next week to see what to do about it.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.

In the August 17, 2011, business section of the Tulsa World there is an interesting article. The article states that Taco Bueno recently decided to locate a store in Glenpool. That much is true. The article says that the demographics and location played a minor role, and that the driving force for the site selection was a Facebook page where Glenpool citizens voiced their appetite for Bueno’s food. Now I’m not saying that the Facebook page didn’t have an effect on the decision, it surely did. Readers of the Tulsa World should learn that social media is a powerful force. But make no mistake about it, the social media page will never replace the market dynamics and premium sales potential that Taco Bueno will enjoy on this site. In any restaurant or retail site it is always all about the bottom line. Two years of hard work and a dynamic effort by the City of Glenpool administration, consultants, brokers, and developers as well as Taco Bueno’s renowned real estate department should be factored in as well.

That being said, can social media be used by communities as a tool in recruiting retail? ABSOLUTELY! Cities should take advantage of any and all available means to market themselves to the watching world. The use of technology in every form helps a local entity share it’s attributes to those inquiring minds who are looking at the community as a place to live, work, get an education, and as we have already seen, looking to locate retail and restaurant sites.

In this economy, where every new retail deal will be scrutinized by the developer, the broker, the banker, and in house real estate department of the end user, cities should take the lead in providing accurate and dependable information on the strengths of the local market. We have proven that retailers and restaurants that tend to pass over generic city and chamber propaganda will listen to an independent, qualified, third party professional like Retail Attractions. And if the community is using Facebook to broadcast it’s retail potential, so much the better!

Let Retail Attractions help your community. We have helped dozens of local communities in several states see and change reality. Our firm can help you cast a vision and set a course for a thriving community where people want to live, work, shop and dine. Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.

Cities all over the country are experiencing rapid changes that will set precedence for the future. Decisions being made now will affect countless multitudes many years in the future. It is imperative that community leaders cast a vision of what could be and what is possible. That vision has to be communicated effectively to the citizens, so that families in the community can live, work, and play knowing they have a positive future ahead of them. Communities that refuse to plan for growth and for change, or that refuse to put infrastructure in place that will allow for positive change are always going to be playing “catch up”. Everybody knows the economy is unstable. If city governments wait until the national economy stabilizes, it will be impossible to plan for the future. Note: the future is coming whether the economy stabilizes or not. Cities that are choosing to improve the quality of life for their citizens by investing in the future are going to grow and prosper, in per capita scale, no matter what happens to the national economy.

Quality of life is a nebulous, hard to define condition that sets communities apart from one another. Any person who has ever traveled at all has seen areas where you say to yourself, “ this place is nice”. Correspondingly we have all been to neighborhoods or communities where the feeling is anything but nice. Quality of life is a force that can affect housing values, residential growth, private sector investment, and local pride. Quality of life is also very hard to maintain. It tends to deteriorate very rapidly and must constantly be improved. Shopping and retail choices, academic and educational choices, youth sports and other recreational opportunities, and well maintained roadways and developments affect quality of life. Cities are discovering that in order to grow and stay competitive they must now contend with communities outside their immediate locales, some of which are far, far more invested in the quality of life staples that they themselves desire.

What does it take to insure that optimum quality of life grows with a community? First, it takes VISION to see what could be and what is possible and practical for a specific locale. It takes COURAGE to think outside the box and perhaps even to think outside of the way we have always done it before. Finally, it takes MONEY. Everything comes with a cost. True to form, the old adage “you get what you pay for” applies to this discussion.

I’ve had the pleasure of working for dozens of different cities across the country. I’ve seen lots of city council meetings and lots of local politics. I’ve seen good city managers and some who were in the wrong business. I’ve seen city councils and trustee boards with real public servants and I’ve experienced some where elected officials ran for office because they had an axe to grind or where there to line their own pockets or the pockets of their friends. The real joy of my work comes when we see a body of elected officials who decide to put their personal likes and wishes aside and work together to make their community a better place. When people have a collective vision and are all working for the same goal, amazing things can happen.

The responsibility of handling public funds is a sacred trust. For the sake of the future, public monies should be invested in ways that will bring a good return and improve the overall quality of life in a community. City leaders should be vision casters, and at the very least take heart of their responsibility as a public servant to make wise investments for the future quality of life of their citizens. If your answer is always “NO” to growth and to change you are the enemy of quality of life. Anybody who runs for public office should have a plan and a process in mind that would make life better for all their constituents. If you are a public servant now, and all you do is generate strife and negativism, you should resign. Every public servant should lead, follow, or get out of the way. Let the citizens decide what quality of life and amenities they want to pay for.

Contact us today to make a seemingly overwhelming task more manageable.

Rickey Hayes is the principal of Retail Attractions, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping cities and developers successfully find retail sites, close deals and improve the quality of life for our client cities.