The city of Union is moving forward with a retail study, even though a draft of its comprehensive plan suggested it might have work to do before it can craft a plan to lure stores and restaurants in large numbers.
The Board of Alderman, at its July 11 meeting, approved paying Buxton, a Texas-based consumer intelligence technology company, $25,000 for a yearlong contract. The company tracks consumer shopping patterns through cellphones to help its customers identify potential business opportunities. The company receives around 3 billion cellphone “pings” each year to track where people come from and what they are buying.
Union officials are using money from the American Rescue Plan Act to pay for the Buxton service, Assistant City Administrator James Schmieder said.
The Buxton service shows stores who their customer base is and where they are coming up short and shows the city what businesses they are missing, Schmieder said previously.
The city has worked with Buxton before.
In 2007, the city hired Buxton to obtain consumer credit card information Buxton gathered to come up with a list of 15 retailers the city could target to locate in the community. Union paid $19,000 toward a $50,000 study with private investors picking up the rest of the cost.
But this time, Union is not just using the Buxton survey to find new retailers.
A draft of the city’s comprehensive plan, which Union is paying St. Louis-based H3 Studio $50,000 to complete, recommended that Union focus less on highway commercial-type retail development. Instead, the plan recommends Union put a greater land use focus on attracting more diverse businesses from non-retail commercial sectors.
“It’s going to help diversify your workforce population, and it’s going to increase demand for housing in the city, and it’s going to better support the types of retail and restaurants and things that are also amenities that serve the current residents of the city,” H3 Principal Tim Breihan told attendees at a June workshop meeting on the draft plan.
Union currently has an “excess” of land zoned highway commercial, Breihan said.
“The highway retail is going to be continue to be important, particularly as the city can grow out and annex out to I-44,” he said. “But the land use in the zoning should be more strategic about where the development actually occurs.”
That means that in the next five to seven years, even with aggressive growth, Union will still be in Washington’s “retail catchment area,” Breihan said.
“So, if you’re thinking about attracting retailers to Union, there’s still going to be a difficulty, based on population and, you know, they’re saying, ‘Well, we’ve already got a store in Washington, there’s not enough population to put a store in Union today, or even in the next five to seven years,’ ” he said.
H3’s findings are consistent with the city’s goals, Schmieder said. “In order to attract additional retail, we need additional wage growth and population growth,” he said. “So as you have good paying quality jobs come online and you have additional residents that are fulfilling those jobs, then the retail is sure to follow those two factors.”
When asked if the Buxton study means Union is “putting the cart before the horse,” Schmieder said Monday that will not be the case. Buxton also will help existing retailers know how they could change to meet the needs of Union area residents by identifying retail sectors the city is lacking in.
“It will also hopefully demonstrate to our existing retailers what gaps exist,” he said, giving an example about shoes. As shoe stores go out of business, he sad more shoe sales are being made online or with large stores like J.C. Penney or Kohl’s.
“So a specialized shoe store may or may not be within our future,” he said. “But if you identify those types of gaps, what you can do is start to create those existing retailers to start to fill in.”
This happened recently when Walmart renovated in Union. “They expanded their shoe section,” Schmieder said. “It’s not exactly a surprise. We don’t have anyone that’s really selling shoes in our immediate area, so if Walmart expands its selection, and Dickey Bub expands their selection, that becomes a good thing for our community.”
