Owasso OK – A Test Case For Retail Success

Posted by Rickey Hayes on February 9, 2010 in Blog | No Comments

Written by
Rickey Hayes
Retail Attractions, LLC

If you look at cities around the country who have experience a boom of retail growth in recent years you’ll find many of the same characteristics. All of the cities, especially suburban communities in densely populated urban growth cities, share shockingly similar traits.

• Strategic plan for growth – The community had a growth mentality. Cities need to see growth as positive. We are certainly not talking about sprawl here but managed well planned growth. Transportation, water, sewer and technology infrastructure has to grow as well.
• Surging residential growth – Owasso was averaging one 500 new single family residential dwelling a year. In the same time frame over a thousand upscale apartment units were also constructed. This growth has slowed somewhat, but still continues. In 2009 the City of Owasso had about 241 new single family starts.
• Young, well educated, upwardly, mobile population – Owasso’s demographic profile revealed a higher than normal percentage of college educated, young families with stable employment and home ownership. This trend still continues.
• High disposable income – Owasso’s average family household income was well above normal income levels and well above the threshold that national retailers tend to use for baseline comparisons.
• Strategic location – Owasso’s location and state and national highway’s traffic flow patterns funneled traffic from a larger regional area into the urban center of Tulsa. This one criterion is always evident in “keyhole” or “portal” suburban communities and where you find the traffic flow.
• Timing – Owasso’s growth meshed with the cyclic nature of retail development. When massive retail development came to Owasso, almost every national retailer was in the middle of a very aggressive growth mode. Retail growth and new market expansions ebbs and flows with the economy and many other variable factors.
• Development philosophy – Owasso’s city administration built a foundational philosophy of customer service into every city department and backed it up. We saw developers and retailers as our customers and not only as customers, but as the engine that powered our local economy. There was a “can do” attitude at every level of the organization (administration, planning, public works:.everybody at every level was proactive and involved).
• Impactful marketing material – There are two kinds of material:good kind/bad kind. The good kind is effective. The bad kind is not effective. You should let professionals do this:basic rule of thumb-concise, factual, and verifiable.
• Use of technology – Website and GIS data and the use of other cutting edge technology. It is not enough to have the technology available but to use it in strategic ways.
• Incentives – Almost every square foot of 4.2 million square feet of national retail that came to Owasso had an incentive attached to it. If your community is not ready to partner with the private sector to incentivize retail growth, you’re already fighting an uphill battle.
• After care – Very important to build and maintain relationships with local retail management. Often the national retailers need assistance on marketing their goods and services, especially if they are just entering the market.