Retail initiative progresses with assessment meetings

After meeting with Jackson landowners and developers, the city and consulting firm Catalyst Commercial are one step closer to bringing new retail business to Jackson.

The 11 face-to-face meetings completed last week were part of the assessment phase of Catalyst’s yearlong plan to identify and help landowners capitalize on development opportunities in Jackson and Cape Girardeau.

Catalyst founder Jason Claunch said the first goal of the meetings was to help local developers understand what that yearlong plan likely will entail.

“The real purpose of the meeting is dealing with retail assessment, and that will roll into dealership recruitment,” he said. “We wanted to understand [the property owners’] objectives.”

People own land for a variety of reasons, he said, and it’s important all parties be on the same page before courting potential retailers.

“Our recruitment strategy will be based on those objectives,” Claunch said. “For us, the initiative is to find the intersect between the city’s goals, the ownerships’ goals and market opportunities.”

That, he said, is what leads to optimal developments.

Jackson Mayor Dwain Hahs said the meetings were an overall success, opening lines of communication for the project going forward.

“We laid out our retail initiative, what we planned to do and asked them what was their interest, and I’d say it was a very favorable response,” he said. “There were no surprises, and we’ve been working with landowners and developers since this initiative started to make sure there was interest in [development].”

Benton Hill Investments president Tim Goodman was one of the property owners interviewed, and he said the meetings seemed to put the retail development project on the right track.

“I think it was a great first step,” he said. “[The project] will be engaged for a long time, but the things they’ve put in place so far are necessary steps to get to that goal.”

Goodman called Claunch an “energetic and creative guy.”

“He’s really an outside-the-box thinker, and I think that’s what we need in Jackson,” he said. “We have our own real-estate company but all the help you can get from somebody who can talk to retailers or grocery chains ... is good for the discussion for everybody. We’re glad they have got the project going, and we appreciate it.”

Over the next few weeks, Claunch said his company will conduct similar meetings with prominent landowners in Cape Girardeau, as well as complete an ongoing statistical analysis of the area. Traffic patterns, existing businesses and demography all factor into which retailers Catalyst eventually decides to contact.

“We hope in early October to come back and deliver some preliminary findings,” Claunch said.

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627