There are several strategies that a community can implement to sustain or revitalize its downtown. First, determine whether the community has a population that could sustain the downtown business environment. If so, then the reasons that these people are not patronizing local businesses need to be determined and addressed by local businesses or policymakers.
If the local population is not large enough to sustain the downtown area, then the community and its businesses must draw in customers from outside. While harder to define, the factors that would draw these people in must also be determined.
In either case, there are several strategies that a community could use.
* Institute a “Shop at Home” campaign led by the local chamber of commerce.
* Survey current shoppers to find out why they shop in the downtown area and how they would like to see the downtown change.
* Implement a business retention and expansion program targeted to local retail businesses. This program asks businesses what community, workforce, and local policy changes need to be made to help them become more sustainable.
* Encourage businesses to match their operating hours with the free time of their community. For example, businesses should not close at 5:00 in the afternoon if their primary customer base doesn’t get off work until 5:00.
* Work with the local chamber of commerce to develop educational programs aimed at making businesses more efficient and profitable.
