Retail is a vital industry to the local economy and the tax revenue derived is a critical part of the budget for all local municipalities. So, let’s talk about a quick retail story happening now.
The cities of Cape and Jackson recently came together to hire a retail consultant. The reports are in and we are moving on to the next phase. Today, I want to share a few items from the Cape Girardeau report.
As a part of the market analysis, Cape’s Primary Trade area is defined as a 31-minute drive-time. These are the people who are most commonly shopping in the city. The population for that area is just over 106,000 with a residential purchasing power of $4.6 billion dollars. These numbers are projected to continue growing.
The report goes on to give detailed breakdowns of age, race, educational attainment and more. With this info, they were able to identify known spending patterns of these individuals. Ultimately this leads us to a point where we can understand demand and compare it to supply. For instance, we might see that there is a demand for 200,000 square foot of space in a given retail sector and we currently only have 170,000 square foot of space. This arms us with critical information to recruit in that sector. And that’s what we are doing now. The consultants have generated a list of businesses that best fit the gaps in our market and the recruitment process has begun. We expect to work with several new retailers this year and hopefully score some big wins for the region.
