Five Characteristics of High Growth Communities

Posted by Retail Attractions Blog on January 6, 2016 in Blog | No Comments

Achieving population and revenue growth are key goals of city planners, and cities that succeed in both typically share common traits. While some communities are situated in locations where growth occurs more easily, it typically requires hard work to build a sound foundation that will encourage population growth and new retail development.

Here at Retail Attractions, we believe smart, successful retail development is a vital part of a community’s growth. We’re ready to help your community through the entire growth process, from evaluating your community assets, to creating a strategic plan, to bringing in developers and maintaining good relationships with them.

Good Location

An essential trait of growing cities is having a strategic location. Communities are more likely to develop if they have convenient highway access and the ability to funnel traffic in from a larger regional area. Housing availability, excellent educational facilities, and medical facilities also contribute to drawing new businesses and residents in. You’ll also need available, developable property to attract retailers.

Growth-Ready Infrastructure

One of the easiest growth foundations to overlook is infrastructure, but if you’re planning for city growth, it’s one of the most important areas to consider. Retail Attractions has experience with general municipal consulting on local and regional levels, and we can help your city design a plan for healthy infrastructure. We’ll work with you on water and sewer plans, transportation and traffic flow, technology, zoning, parking and other critical areas of infrastructure that should be in place prior to city growth.

Residential Growth

Population and retail growth go hand-in-hand. The more retail and housing development that takes place, the more new residents will be attracted to your community. And if your community is attracting young, upwardly mobile residents with stable incomes, then you’ll have more retailers who want to build in your area. Retailers are also more likely to invest in communities that are home to a high percentage of families and homeowners.

Marketing Philosophy

Even with a good location, solid plans for expanding infrastructure and residential growth, your community won’t attract new investors without a mindset for growth. Your community must be ready to offer incentives to new residents and interested developers, and come up with a solid marketing strategy. Set yourself apart from the competition with a user-friendly city website, professional marketing with accurate information, and by offering a variety of incentives.

Strategic Plan

Retail Attractions is ready to sit down with your city and stakeholders to assess community strengths and weaknesses and develop a strategic growth plan. This will outline action steps for the community, list stakeholder responsibilities, and include target completion dates for future projects and tasks. Our job doesn’t end there, though. Retail Attractions will stick by your community as you build relationships with retailer developers. To maintain city growth and prepare for new growth phases, it’s important to continue supporting and marketing your retailers.

Ready to develop a plan to make your city a hot spot for growth and development? Contact us today.