Business Recruitment and Retention

Sub Topics: Business Recruitment and Retention

First Wednesday Art Walk

For the past 13 years, Downtown Vision Inc. (DVI) has produced the First Wednesday Art Walk in the heart of Downtown Jacksonville. This innovative event acts as an economic development tool supporting downtown merchants and cultural entities while improving the vitality of downtown through the arts. With more than 10,000 people participating each month, Art Walk has grown into a treasured street festival, one that is constantly reimagined to mirror the diversity of Jacksonville.

The Best of Cape Town Central City 2018 guide

The Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) began to look for ways to promote the many offerings that had become integral to the Central City and, in particular, to add value to the stakeholders that had invested in the CBD in “Eat”, “Stay”, “Play” “Shop” or “Visit” destinations. To fulfill this, “The Best of Cape Town Central City” guide was created in 2009, originally published in conjunction with the internationally reknown “Time Out” brand.

Get It In The Glebe – Awareness Marketing Campaign

Leading up to 2017, the Glebe neighborhood had seen significant changes to its product mix, including new retail, award-winning restaurants, increased events and programming, and the completion of the Lansdowne area featuring a park, recreational facilities and a stadium. The shift in the Glebe’s amenity and entertainment offerings created an opportunity for Glebe BIA to re-position the neighborhood as the place to visit while encouraging all to “Get it in the Glebe.”

Reimagining Girls’ Night Out

Oh man, Girls’ Night Out? Hasn’t that been done (to death)? Hold on a second, though. Downtown Somerville’s Girls’ Night Out is worth a look exactly because the concept is…well, maybe a little moth-eaten. If you can give an event enough of a makeover to change minds about what Girls’ Night Out is supposed to be, sell out the event a week in advance, and give skeptical businesses one of their most profitable nights of the year (at least 65 conversions on average), that’s worth talking about.

Shop for a Cause Day

The spirit of giving. Fabulous shopping. Making a difference. These are the hallmarks of Portland Downtown’s Shop for a Cause Day, a cherished community event that captures hearts while creating change. Shop for a Cause Day is designed to raise funds and awareness for local nonprofit organizations while, at the same time, showcasing our vibrant small-business community.

Madison Night Market

A late 2016 study of downtown retail, conducted by the City of Madison and the BID, entitled “Ensuring a Vibrant Downtown Retail Destination” encouraged retail pop-ups, shop-around promotions and specialty markets as strategies to support a healthy retail district. As a direct and immediate effort to undertake strategies recommended from the study, the BID hosted the 1st ever Madison Night Markets.

Retail Strategic Plan

The City of Cambridge is experiencing rapid changes in consumer purchasing habits; in particular the growth in on-line shopping that impacts traditional downtown districts. The city realized that they needed to better understand these macro trends, and needed guidance to enable city staff and leaders, as well and the business community to develop best practice policy prescriptions that could be effectively implemented by the City and embraced by the community.

Oswego, New York, DRI Strategic Investment Plan

The small city of Oswego parlayed a $10 million state grant into more than $50 million in new downtown investment. Even after years of decline, Oswego retains some important assets to build on: walkable scale, historic buildings, and a beautiful setting on the Oswego River. The city won state funding to create a plan that identified specific projects, explained how they would benefit downtown, and showed that they could attract other money.

Top Issues Council: Achieving and Maintaining a Diverse Retail Mix

IDA’s Diverse Retail Council is publishing this report to help urban district managers understand where and how revitalization is happening and how to encourage retail diversity in their work. Urban place management organizations are uniquely suited to champion the diversity of their district’s retail offerings, while both affirming the authenticity of the place and focusing the market demand.

Top Issues Council: How We Do Economic Development

Downtowns, as areas of rapid growth, have become key tools in the economic development arsenal. They have created the places where entrepreneurs and businesses want to work. This document chronicles and reports on the intersection of downtown management and economic development. Today, economic development has become a staple program of downtown organizations, and the variety of approaches to downtown economic development is immense, reflecting differences in downtowns and their communities.

2016 Quantifying the Value of Canadian Downtowns: A Research Toolkit

This toolkit is a groundbreaking effort to provide a downtown data standard, a common set of data and processes that will help Canadian place management organizations, such as BIAs/BIDs, establish and sustain evaluation and compare progress among downtowns. While this toolkit is geared towards Canadian downtowns, it also is of value for urban districts outside of Canada who are looking to move toward data standardization and data best practices. In the toolkit, organizations will find directions and insights on collecting, organizing, storing, and presenting downtown-specific data to make the case for continued investment and support.

Demographic Inversion and Ethnic Sub-Markets

Some of the industry’s top retail experts outline what it means to have a diverse retail mix and how the demographic inversion of downtowns puts ethnically diverse retail at risk.

Incubators – A Shot in the Arm for Your District

Leverage local talent and demand for coworking space to create a powerful entrepreneurial environment in your backyard! This presentation shares a number of initiatives for assisting startups and aspiring business owners.

Top Issues Council: Attracting Commercial Development

Attracting commercial development to an urban core relies on a multitude of factors to be successful. Some of the issues that need to work in tandem to create a platform for attracting commercial development include: a vibrant downtown, a user-friendly permitting process, available capital and land, infrastructure and ongoing management and maintenance. This report provides an overarching view of the evolution of urban retail throughout the past fifty years to the present.

Miami – Value of Downtowns Pilot Study

The Senior Manager of Urban Ecnomics & Market Development for the Miami Downtown Development Authority, Nicholas Martinez, AICP shares the results of IDA’s Value of Downtown study for downtown Miami.

The Current Narrative on the Retail Industry

In the age of Amazon and the explosive growth of online retail the rumors of the death of brick and mortar have been greatly exaggerated. Mike Bern, Principal at MJB Consulting, walks through the numbers around today’s retail industry and shares his insights on what will help downtown retail remain competitive and relevant against online retail.

Internet VS IRL, and the Power of FOMO

Events can be a significant and reliable strategy for attracting people to downtown. The panelists share their strategies and marketing tactics to put on successful events.

Wheaton Central Business District Advisory Panel: How to Leverage County Assets in Downtown

IDA’s Advisory Panels are a time-tested way to explore new ideas, solve difficult problems, and rally the board, staff and community around priority projects or topics. This panel weighed in on how to best use county land assets and strategically locate and leverage valuable amenities in downtown to spur growth. The report details the panel’s findings and recommendations.

Colorado Springs ULI/IDA Advisory Panel: Affecting a Downtown Reniassance

IDA’s Advisory Panels are a time-tested way to explore new ideas, solve difficult problems, and rally the board, staff and community around priority projects or topics. This panel was tasked with creating a strategy for a downtown renaissance. The panel highlighted assets to leverage, identified challenges, and identified specific opportunities to execute high-payoff actions to focus time and funding on. The presentation details the panel’s findings and recommendations.

City of Tulsa Advisory Panel: How to Bring Bustle to Downtown

IDA’s Advisory Panels are a time-tested way to explore new ideas, solve difficult problems, and rally the board, staff and community around priority projects or topics. This panel was asked to assess the downtown’s on-the-street activity, street level offerings, and the governance and partnerships managing the downtown area. The report details the panel’s findings and recommendations.

If You Build It, They Will Come – Building and Promoting Your Retail Destinations

This session delves into attracting a consumer base in the changing retail environment through the creation of specific economic development initiatives and strategic destination marketing to drive traffic. Using two case studies, the Selden Market and Glebe Spree 150, Speakers will discuss the relationship between building retail spaces and promoting those places to draw consumers again and again.

Innovation Districts 2.0: Lessons Learned from Early Adopters and Future Action

Dozens of cities have designated specific neighborhoods as “innovation districts.” These districts have three essential components: anchor institutions, entrepreneurs and amenities. While some pieces of a district may emerge organically, activating a district to benefit the entire city requires purposeful action and leadership.

How Data Guides Your Future – Experience From Abroad

What are the key interventions to secure the sustainability of your downtown? How do you prioritise decisions? A $1.3 million research study in the UK provides insight. It identifies the 25 key local interventions that BIDs should take. Using pedestrian flow counts, the research has also identified four types of centres with differing usage patterns and needs. Find out about the new classification of centres and why the new evidence-based decision-making approach is being adopted.

Zoning and Regulations for Retail Vitality

Successful retailers must exhibit creativity to thrive in a rapidly changing retail environment yet, concepts like breweries, retailers that offer educational classes, and small scale artisanal food manufacturers frequently get tripped up with code violations, parking requirements, and special permits that make it hard to compete. This session brings together national experts and practitioners to provide guidance and ensure your codes and regulations align with the new retail reality.

The Value of U.S. Downtowns: Informing a Downtown Vitality Index

The Value of U.S. Downtowns and Center Cities is a data-driven examination of downtowns’ role as engines of citywide vitality. This project is in its second iteration of a new, repeatable formula for calculating the value of downtown and makes the case that investing in downtown delivers powerful citywide and regional benefits. Urban centers are productive, exciting and full of potential- learn how IDA actually measures this.

Thinking Outside the (Big) Box: New and Better Approaches to Retail Market Analysis

Urban place management organizations are nimble in navigating transportation issues. The session will discuss trends and how UMPOs play an essential role in planning and implementing projects that improve connectivity in city centers including public transportation, bike infrastructure, transportation network companies and autonomous vehicles. UPMOs assist transportation projects at every level working with the community, government, and transportation agencies through every stage.

How We Do Economic Development: Best Practices and Trends from IDA’s Ecnonomic Development Top Issue Council

IDA’s Economic Development Top Issues Council has been working throughout 2018 to compile research on how downtown organizations engage and practice economic development. See how your downtown stacks up. Learn about cutting edge programs and policies that downtown organizations are using to advance their economic development agendas. Find out about the top trends and issues facing downtowns in the area of economic development.

Cultivating Entrepreneurship

As urban district professionals, we are all trying to create the foundations for growing new businesses, filling vacant spaces, and creating new jobs and vibrancy. Our expert panel will discuss how different cities and institutions are driving innovation, launching and running successful incubator spaces, and working with private and public partners to cultivate the right environment for new businesses to develop, grow and thrive.

Calculating the Value of U.S. Downtown and Center Cities

This year, IDA partnered with 13 downtown place management organizations to conduct the first-ever project to calculate the value of American downtowns, putting center cities into their unique economic and geographical context as compared to the city and the region, examining key metrics based on the principles of economy, inclusion, vibrancy, identity and resilience. The downtowns served as pilots to craft IDA’s new data standard that will be used year-over-year.

Shop Small: Supporting Independent Businesses in Your Community

Supporting local, small businesses is important to the regional economy. In this session, you’ll hear from three communities who utilized Small Business Saturday, an annual U.S. small business holiday shopping tradition created by American Express in 2010, to help initiate year-round Shop Small movements in their districts. Learn how to find local partners, leverage social media and activate your downtown to make a big impact on your small business community.

The Many Meanings of Retail Diversity

Drawing on case studies from across North America, the IDA Top Issues Council on “Diverse Retail Mix” will be exploring different meanings of retail diversity and for each meaning, arguing on behalf of its importance, analyzing with which goals or stakeholders it conflicts and how true “crossover” might be achieved, and finally, what specific roles a Downtown organization should play in its promotion and preservation.

Setting the Future of Retail Downtown

This session will demonstrate importance and necessity for business improvement organizations to provide ongoing support to the retail sector. A case study will be presented from Iowa City detailing two very different two programs: infrastructure and marketing.

Become a Local Partner with Google

The mission of Google’s Get Your Business Online program is to help every business be found by every customer looking for them online. Learn how you can partner with Google to help the small businesses you work with in your community, using resources, trainings, gear and one-on-one help from the Google team, all completely free of cost.

Bridging the Gaps in Your Retail Landscape

Learn how to champion retail and business diversity in your downtown, and how to tailor it to both market demand and the uniqueness of your district. There are many socioeconomic, geographic and other components that come into play when building a neighborhood. This webinar teaches strategies for understanding those factors and how you can use them.