Make them an offer they can’t turn down.
The “make ‘em an offer” comes right out of the Godfather movie, but it makes a lot of sense when dealing with a rundown downtown. My wife took on the task of recruiting new business to downtown El Dorado when we started renovatiing the property we had purchased. She went to the Mall, strip centers, and little out of the way stores. And she sat down with the owners and laid out a lease and rent proposal that they couldn’t resist. She brought at least ten new businesses to downtown El Dorado, Arkansas. Free rent? You bet and a lot of it. Renovating the building for the tentent? Sure. The result has turned out great. Although the downtown rental property had a negative return on investment the first year, it has made up for it in later years.
And she didn’t recruit just any business. Her plan was to bring in a retail mix that had a common shopper. Very much like a mall does. Another focus was to recruit only independent businesses…speciality stores. She even refused to renew a lease of a nationally known retailer. Her overall plan turned out extremely successful, and the resulting retail mix of stores was one of the primary reasons downtown El Dorado was named the best downtown in the nation.
So my advice to those empty downtowns around our nation is to “Make a retailer an offer they can’t resist.”
