The consultant hired by Paris Economic Development Corp. to attract retail businesses to Paris says what he terms large deals he is working on could fall through because of the action Paris City Council took earlier this week.

With a 4-2 vote Monday, the council sent the PEDC’s budget back to its board with instructions to remove money for retail recruitment. On Sept. 30, the move ends a contract with Paris native Rickey Hayes, of Retail Attractions, which has its headquarters in Owasso, Okla.

Hayes said he is concerned some PEDC board members may not understand the importance of retail development and its relationship with industrial recruitment. He says retail recruitment goes hand-in-hand with marketing Paris to the manufacturing and industrial world and PEDC board members in 2010-11 knew its benefit.

Hayes said companies look at three things when they consider a location — quality of life, good schools and available retail outlets where people can buy goods and services without having to travel far, he said.

“What we are doing is putting Paris on the national radar and we are doing it through our network that we have spent a lot of time and energy developing,” Hayes said. “We have worked hard and gotten the respect of developers and they listen to us.”

Hayes said Paris doesn’t make the top 50 retail markets in Texas and gets passed over by all but the smallest retailers unless someone is out there talking. He said he makes sure Paris is a topic of conversation at venues such as trade shows, cocktail parties and other places where decisions are made about locating a retail outlet.

The fruits of the Retail Attractions network can be seen in Paris.

“It started with Rue 21 in 2011 and has gone from there,” Hayes said. Retail Attractions works behind the scenes supplying market information to franchise companies and can be at least partially, if not totally, credited with Schlotzsky’s, Rusty Taco, Pizza Hut’s new location and the Which Wich? Superior Sandwiches in the travel center under construction on NE Loop 286.

“I can’t take full credit for any of them but we sent supporting data so the companies would feel comfortable in investing in a market that hasn’t grown in population in 15 or 20 years,” Hayes said.

Hayes says he is particularly concerned about misinformation about retailers paying sales taxes and those taxes then being used to recruit competition. Retailers, he said, serve as a conduit to collect taxes paid by people making purchases.

“Over half of your sales tax comes from people who live outside the city of Paris,” Hayes said. “You are a true regional market where people come to shop.”

One of the first things Retail Attractions did in 2010 was develop a market analysis, which Retail Attractions automatically updates two to three times each year and sends out to 150 developers. PEDC will lose the update service and the marketing, but Hayes said PEDC could benefit for several years from its demographic data, which can be used for industrial recruitment purposes.

Hayes said he and PEDC executive director Steve Gilbert are going to work on a plan to wind down some of his work by the time his contract runs out so there won’t be a sudden drop in activity. He says there will be a residual effect from the retail work PEDC has been doing.