Retail Analysis and Strategy Services

The Vendor is required to provide retail analysis and strategy services for include:
- Data collection and analysis:
•    Update the 2009 parcel-level inventory of first-floor commercial spaces with current vacancy status, business type, and building condition. 
•    Identify and map clusters within downtown subareas. 
•    Analyze city of authority pacer AI data to quantify temporal patterns in downtown foot traffic by segment (i.e. Visitors, residents, office workers). 
•    Identify and map areas with the most intense activity at different points of time. 
•    Analyze ESRI business analyst and point of sale data to estimate consumer demand by category (i.e., retail, food and beverage, live entertainment, and personal services). 
•    Analyze data from the city’s office of tourism and marketing office and other visitation centers and programmatic events to estimate consumer expenditure patterns for large scale events. 
•    Develop forecasts for first floor consumer expenditure by category under various scenarios for residential, office, local demand, tourism, and hotel occupancy. 
•    Review previous parking studies to understand how the supply and management of parking influences current conditions and proposed strategies.
- Stakeholder interviews:
•    Interview local business owners (no fewer than 10) to identify strengths and weaknesses in the business support ecosystem and regulatory environment. 
•    Assess their plans for growth, and near and medium-term expectations for the downtown area. 
•    This will include business owners in authority and in suburban locations near new city who represent use types that would be a good fit for the downtown. 
•    Interview commercial real estate leaders to collect feedback on the trends observed in the data, identify strengths and weaknesses in the regulatory environment, and surface changes that they see in the marketplace. 
•    Interview planning and transportation leaders to identify issues with mobility and proposed and planned changes to mobility that may influence ground floor development. 
•    Interview leaders from other cities to prepare comparative case studies in similarly situated cities working to adapt their downtowns to changing social and economic patterns. 
•    Part of this work should include examples of a suburban establishments expanding or relocating to a downtown, and what needed to be in place for that to happen.
- Policies, strategies, and implementation toolkit:
•    Develop strategic recommendations tailored to authority unique context. 
•    This should be presented as a Mulit-track with particular focus on how the authority economic development council and other non-governmental agencies and partners support developers, property owners, and small businesses, and how city government and its agencies refine and administer policies and programs to meet the needs of a changing downtown.
•    This will also include an implementation toolkit identifying lead agencies and time horizons for key action items with the private and public sectors working in alignment. 
•    Identify key opportunities in the near, mid-, and long-term, and the status of efforts to improve these properties with a focus on vibrant uses, marque national retailers, and larger regional institutional presence.
- Report writing, design, and review:
•    Develop a PowerPoint synthesizing data and preliminary findings for review and input from city officials and other key stakeholders. 
•    Draft written report for review and input from city officials and other key stakeholders. 
•    Generate visual elements of report (i.e., maps, renderings, photographs) and produce a graphically designed final draft in pdf layout for review. 
•    Develop a final report and a final PowerPoint presentation for public presentations.