Here’s Why You Should Work On Your Municipal Infrastructure Before Starting Retail Development
Retailers do extensive research and analysis to make sure they’ve found a good location before deciding to build in a town or city. You can help your community stand-out in these searches by meeting their requirements for retail development sites. One of the best ways to do this is by focusing on developing your municipal infrastructure.
Having the right municipal infrastructure in place is a huge advantage when marketing your community. Retailers will be much more eager to work with a community that’s proactive. If they see you have an actionable plan to upgrade infrastructure and handle the increased demands of retail development, they’ll see you’re serious about working with them.
Plan Your City Systems
If you’re ready with plans for improved traffic flow and public transportation, that might just be the thing that catches a retail developer’s eye. Retailers want to see that your city is prepared to make new retail developments easily accessible. They’ll also be looking at available properties to make sure they’re the right size and in a good location to attract traffic from local and out-of-town customers.
Retailers also want to know that the city infrastructure can handle an increased demand on water, sewage, electrical, communication, and other systems. They won’t want to deal with construction delays or other problems that might come up if your city isn’t ready to expand.
Reexamine City Ordinances
It’s also a good idea to take a look at city ordinances and zoning that will affect retailers. These include rules governing parking, landscaping, signage, and lighting. Making things easy for incoming retailers can go a long way toward convincing them to build in your town.
Another thing to reexamine is your review and approval process. Retailers are not going to want to mess with a lengthy approvals process for permits. The more simple and easy to understand your approval process is, the more attractive working with your community will be.
Get Some Help
Retail Attractions provides general municipal consulting services to growing communities. We offer services that will help you develop:
- Local or regional comprehensive plans
- Water, stormwater and sewer master plans
- Transportation/traffic flow master plans
- Technology master plans
- Zoning master plans
- Parking, lighting, sign, and landscaping ordinances
Once your community has a plan for developing a healthy infrastructure, Retail Attractions can help you come up with a plan that will entice retail development to your community. If you want to learn more, just get in touch with us through this link.
If you found this article useful, then you’ll probably also like my book City on a Hill. It gives a no-nonsense take on economic development that’s really helpful for cities just getting started with their retail development plans.