UCDA COMMISSIONS RETAIL ANALYSIS

The Union County Development Association (UCDA) has retained the Growth Services Group (GSG), a national workforce intelligence and consulting firm, to conduct a Supplement Retail Overview for the Creston community. This retail overview provides a demographic and economic overview of the subject area to determine the overall feasibility for new mixed use development. Information and findings will be delivered via professionally designed multi-page retail marketing flyer ready for use by the development group in their attraction efforts.

GSG will conduct a retail analysis of the subject area including the 15 minute and 20 minute drive times. The analysis will include a Housing Summary, Traffic Count Profile, Retail Market Profile, Retail Market Potential, Retail Marketplace Profile (Leakage/Surplus), Population Summary and Household Income Profile. The analysis will also include Retail Goods and Services Expenditures for various retail sectors.

According to Wayne Pantini, Executive Director of UCDA, “It is important for this regional hub community to ascertain the needs of our area citizens to ensure our retailers are providing the products necessary to meet the local and regional demand. Mr. Pantini added that in some cases where retail leakage is occurring, people are leaving town to purchase products in much larger communities outside the area due to the lack of availability in our community. This practice leads to lost sales revenue for the local merchants as well as reduced tax revenues for the community and county. ”

GSG CEO Corey Mehaffy added, “The goal of a project like this is to identify the areas where communities have additional unmet demand and bring those revenues that are currently leaking to other communities back home. Once these areas are identified, the community can employ several potential strategies to shore up this demand.”

Mr. Pantini added, “First, the community can approach existing merchants and make them aware of the unmet demand to see if the issue can be addressed by adding additional product lines or services in the existing stores. Additionally, if no local options exist, we can be proactive and can use this retail leakage data regarding the unmet demand to promote start-up businesses and attract new businesses to the area.”

Once completed, the Retail Overview will be used to evaluate market demand and attract new investments as necessary.

UCDA works to promote new investment in the area to enhance the quality of life for citizens. This new investment leads to the creation of new jobs, an increased tax base and diversification of the local economy.