Following Montgomery Alabama’s 2022 Downtown Action Plan, the City commissioned ESI and The Riddle Company to conduct a retail market analysis and create a retail attraction strategy. This included identifying current data gaps preventing national retail attractions, performing essential market research and analysis to provide the City with intelligence and data to support retail attraction, developing a strategy of tactics and tools to support the City’s retail goals, and providing the City with a list of potential tenants that might be catalytic to attracting new resident development and fill a gap in the existing merchandise mix that results in new co-tenancy.
This project involved several studies to understand the City’s baseline, including trade area, demographic and market, retail inventory, and gap analyses. Additionally, the team examined retail supply and demand, consumer segmentation, analyzed trends and identified best practices.
ESI and The Riddle Company produced a series of strategic recommendations to support the City of Montgomery’s long-term goals including:
- Promotion of the city on a national scale by highlighting recent wins (total investment) and the region’s developing reputation as a technology hub and destination for large companies.
- Recommendation of expanded convention facilities as an opportunity to enhance dining and retail options, with a particular focus on tourist-oriented services and goods.
- Expansion of the downtown food truck cluster into a more permanent installation as well as opportunities for transitioning restaurants to permanent facilitates.
- Build upon existing investments along the waterfront and continue to invest in this location.
- Explore incentives to attract retail business.
- Encourage new residential development/mixed-use development downtown to meet the needs of the local market, including accommodations for transitional military personnel, and active second-floor inventories.
