(Atlantic) Austin Farmer, Project Director for Retail Coach, appeared at Wednesday’s Atlantic City Council meeting and provided an update on business recruitment. The City Council hired the business recruiting firm to identify retail opportunities within the city, recruit retailers, coach the community, help fill gaps, and ultimately act as an extension to the current staff, particularly how it relates to retail.
Farmer says for the past six months, they’ve been actively recruiting developers, retailers, restaurants, and franchisees to the Atlantic market.
Farmer says Atlantic’ has an attractive trade population of over 30,000.
Farmer says the trade area has good levels of household income and a good mix of overall age distribution.
The firm scanned through 65 plus retail categories to see how much retail growth there would be across the different categories.
The markets with the most projected growth are Pharmacies and drug stores, at 1.35-percent, cosmetics and beauty supplies, 1.93-percent, sporting goods stores, 2.59-percent, full-service restaurants, 1.75-percent, limited-service restaurants, 1.88-percent, and pet supplies stores, 4.31-percent. Farmer says the most significant interest came from franchisees.
Farmer says most of the prospects would like to locate on the east side of the city along the Walmart corridor. The problem is the lack of site availability. Retail Coach encourages the City and Chamber to purchase or work with land owners to make as much developable land as possible along primary retail corridors from three-quarters to three acres of land.
The City contracted a Retail Coach for $32,000. The Company has been in business for 20-plus years and serves about 120 communities in 40 states.
