Since 2011, the town of Flower Mound, TX, has conducted a Retail & Restaurant Survey every other year. The results are used to ensure that residents have input into the type of downtown they want, recruit new businesses, explore consumer leakage, and educate the public about why certain retail and restaurant wishes are not realistic.
Survey results are included in recruitment packets which are sent to the top 10 requested retailers and the top 10 requested restaurants in each survey cycle. These are accompanied by the town’s eight-page economic development profile, an aerial map of the commercial corridor, and letters from downtown leaders.
The more desired a business, the more materials and follow-up contact will be provided. While survey data is broken down by the top 10 requests in each category, Alora Wachholz, the town’s economic development manager, also crunches the numbers by business type. Perhaps there’s no way to recruit the cute little family diner a respondent enjoyed in a far-flung city, but if enough people request some form of family dining, those numbers are used to persuade family-friendly restaurants that a market exists for them.
The survey has also revealed some surprises. For example, the city was able to generate interest from a discount grocery store, “There’s very little about the demographic in Flower Mound to tell you a discount grocer would be successful here, but when you look at what our residents are actually saying, it’s not that they can’t afford things, but [grocery] shopping is not where they want to spend their money,” explains Wachholz.
Details on the Flower Mound program plus information on downtowns building their own Internet networks, and more appears in the May issue of Downtown Idea Exchange. Click to learn more about Downtown Idea Exchange and other resources for revitalizing downtowns and commercial corridors.