Palm Coast to contract with retail recruiting company

Palm Coast Observer
News

Palm Coast's City Council has contracted with a growth management firm it hopes will help the city fill some empty storefronts and keep residents from heading out of town to shop.

The city’s agreement with the company — Fort Worth, Texas-based Buxton — requires the city to pay $45,000 per year for three years, and tasks Buxton with strategic planning and with recruiting retail businesses for Palm Coast and proving support to those already here.

“This is part of our Prosperity 2021 initiative, to try to help bring and retain businesses in Palm Coast,” Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon told the council at its July 7 meeting. “We have always focused on small businesses for the last few years, and this is trying to take it to a new level with something that will be new for us and new for our private sector partners.”

Buxton was one of four firms that replied to a request for proposal put out by the city, and was the one recommended by city staff.

The firm’s work has been national and extensive, and began 21 years ago, Buxton director Ryon Stewart said in a presentation to the council.

The company has worked with more than 3,000 brands and more than 700 communities — including both small towns and major metro areas like Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Washington D.C. and Orlando, Florida — using analytics obtained from credit card information, among other sources, to match retailers to communities where they’d have a robust customer base, Stewart said.

“When Buxton started on the retail side, the mantra in real estate site selection was ‘location location location,’” he said. “Buxton turned that on its head, and changed that mantra from ‘location location location,’ to helping retailers understand their most important variables are, ‘Who are my customers, where are they located, what’s their value to me.’”

Buxton has already compiled some of that information on the Palm Coast area, Stewart said, finding that about 56% of residents own high definition TVs, 18% have been on a cruise, and almost a third are consuming USA TODAY on a regular basis.

That kind of data, he said, is more useful in attracting retailers than the basic demographic data they’d have otherwise.

“Demographic information ... is not actionable,” he said. “It does not tell a retailer if you’re going to shop in my store or dine in my restaurant. What Buxton does is go from basically this 30,000-foot view of the community not only down to the doorstep level, but into the individual level. So now we understand that Ben drives a truck, he has one child and he’s a Netflix subscriber, while Tom drives a Volvo sedan, has three children and goes to the movies on average point-nine times a month. Why is that important? If I’m AMC or I’m Regal Cinemas and I want to move to Palm Coast, I need to know that there are more Toms out there in your market.”

Stewart said Buxton has used that kind of information to help major retailers like popular grocery chain Trader Joe’s, which Buxton has aided in its eastward expansion from California.

In Palm Coast, Stewart said, millions of dollars are leaving the community as locals shop elsewhere.

“There’s close to $300 million that’s not being accounted for, which means there’s a demand of at least that much here in the community,” he said. “So there’s definitely a need. … You re underserved in the community in retail.”

Stewart said Buxton also had a set of tools to help retain businesses and aid current local businesses.

“We can go into even further detail and show them what types of products should be on their shelves, based upon residential and workforce population,” he said. “I shared with you the example of a local restaurant. We can show them what types of beer that they have the highest preference to be purchased by their residents and by that workforce population.”

Stewart told City Council members that if the city contracted with the company, it would have information on the most qualified retailers for the area in about 65 days, and could then begin the recruitment process, working alongside the city.

As Stewart ended his presentation, Councilman Steve Nobile — himself a local businessman and owner of HSDS Guns on Old Kings Road — said he thought a contract with Buxton was a “very good idea,” but also expressed a concern.

“One thing I would like us as a council to be careful of, is not to overwhelm the mom-and-pop shops by just going out and drenching in the big-box retailers,” he said. “Generally, businesses that are privately owned, locally owned, them and their employees tend to make a higher salary. So I just want us to be mindful of that when we move forward, is that we’re focusing not on this but on our community and, as Mr. Landon said, using this as a resource to grow it.”

“This isn’t changing our focus of assisting small businesses,” Landon replied. “That’s one of our key cores to our economic vitality in the community. This is intended to augment that. This is the next step; it is in no way intended to replace it.”

But there are costs for everyone when residents leave town to shop elsewhere, Landon said.

“When they go out of town, then they spend all their money out of town … and that hurts our small businesses too,” he said. “So, this is trying to keep people from having to get on the highway to go out, and spend their disposable income here, which helps everybody, including creates more jobs and keep all those local dollars here.”

Councilman Bill McGuire said he supported the proposal.

“The reality is that there are a lot of empty storefronts in the city of Palm Coast, and if this program fills some of them up, then it’s money well spent,” he said.

Councilman Jason DeLorenzo asked Stewart what kind of feedback Buxton would give the city if a potential new business decided against coming to Palm Coast

“I’ll tell you why I asked the question,” he said. “We hear, fairly regularly, that ‘Oh no, they won’t come here — they told me — they won’t come here because we’re too difficult to deal with, or our codes are too onerous, or we like a certain type of development and that’s too expensive.’ If you run into that, will we receive that type of feedback. … If that’s what you’re hearing back, are we going to hear that back?”

Stewart replied by saying such complaints are common. “Even if there are those barriers, if we can show them what the opportunity is, truly, oftentimes we can overcome those barriers," he said. "So we see that a lot, it really comes down to really doing the analysis and understanding what is the real opportunity here.”

The council voted unanimously to approve a contract with Buxton, passing up an option for a three-year, $50,000-per-year contract with a clause that would let the city cancel without cause and voting instead to approve a less pricey, $45,000 per year contract — also for three years — that would require the city to show cause in order to cancel it.

"Something like this, a year is not going to show us anything," councilman Steven Nobile said. "I think we need to go with three years, to see -- nothing's going to happen in two or three months. ... My thought is, we save the money, and we give it its term.”

Money for the contract will come from the city’s economic development fund, City Administration Coordinator Beau Falgout said.