New! Downtown Pathfinder
Downtown Pathfinder® is a new service to get your Downtown started on a new path to attract businesses, create jobs, and build a stronger tax base in your Downtown. Quick, inclusive, concise and affordable - even in these tough economic times - Downtown Pathfinder clarifies the existing situation and gets you ready to take your Downtown in a whole new direction. The goal is to meet the Downtown revitalization needs of NLC members at a price they can afford. The scope of services - and fee for those services - is determined on a case-by-case basis through discussions with each interested city.
Downtown Action Agenda
The most cost-effective and comprehensive of all America Downtown® services, the Downtown Action Agenda gives your city everything it needs to obtain greater economic vitality. An extensive outreach process is conducted to engage your community in defining its preferred vision for your Downtown’s future. A statistical market analysis is completed that quantifies your Downtown's retail and office potentials.
Based on the vision and market analysis findings, a five-year, pragmatic, step-by-step, market-driven course of action is recommended to enable your Downtown to attain the community’s vision and benefit from the identified market opportunities. Finally, optimum roles and responsibilities are suggested so that your public, private, and not-for-profit sectors can implement the recommended actions quickly and in partnership. The Downtown Action Agenda is not a Downtown plan or study. It is an aggressive strategy for effective and timely action.
Phased Services
For cities that are unable to undertake the comprehensive Downtown Action Agenda as a whole, the elements of the Downtown Action Agenda can be completed in a phased manner. These elements are:
- Downtown Visioning: A broad cross-section of your community members is engaged in defining what community members hope to see accomplished in their Downtown over the next five years. The process used is open and inclusive and brings the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors together to discuss your Downtown’s future. Immediately following the visioning process, you will receive an America Downtown® memorandum documenting your community’s preferred Downtown vision.
- Downtown Market Analysis: A statistical market analysis is completed that quantifies the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of residents living in your Downtown’s primary trade area; inventories the types of retail and office businesses currently located in your Downtown; recommends the optimum economic niches and orientations that should be created in your Downtown, and recommends the optimum mix of retail and office businesses that will enable your Downtown to capture and sustain customer loyalty in a memorandum. This service is available only to cities that have completed a Downtown vision.
- Downtown Course of Action: Based on the community’s vision and the market analysis findings, a five-year, market-driven course of action is crafted for your Downtown. The course of action document is aimed at enabling your Downtown to attain the community’s vision and capture the economic opportunities revealed in the market analysis. The solutions offered are pragmatic, success-oriented, and designed to improve your Downtown’s economy so that results are long-lasting. Roles and responsibilities are recommended for the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. Please note that this service is available only to cities that have completed a Downtown vision and a Downtown market analysis.
Update Services
Cities that have previously participated in the program can now work closely again with NLC's downtown technical assistance consultants, HyettPalma, Inc., to refresh their cities' Downtown Action Agenda. If the current economic climate has forced the city to delay or cancel needed enhancements to revive the downtown area, the Update Services can help get the city back on track. The service helps cities assess how they have progressed with implementing the strategies from the original plan and gives them a new comprehensive, action-oriented, and market-driven strategy for revitalizing the city's Downtown economy.