Downtown Recruitment

Downtown Business Recruitment

Find the Right Businesses for Your Downtown

Recruit the businesses your community wants with a strategy tailored to your market, available spaces, and long-term vision.

Downtown Recruitment is different

Recruiting businesses for a downtown requires a different approach than recruiting for a shopping center or highway corridor.

Success depends on understanding both what your market can support and what independent businesses, regional operators, and expanding brands are looking for.

That’s where we come in.

So, you know, almost every city that we talk to, they want more retail in their downtown. And of course, that provides a great opportunity for them to really show the character of their community with local businesses, whether that's boutiques or restaurants or even fitness studios and hair salons. And so there's a really deep desire for city leaders to have that. But so often the question is, what comes first? Is it that I have this great retail and awesome brewery and then people come and it becomes this great kind of hotspot? Or is it the reverse? Do I have to get the people there first? Then comes the retail. So when we launched Downtown Recruitment, we really wanted to serve our cities in kind of both ways, helping them first gauge the vitality in their downtown. Vitality is a word that we use a lot that really is kind of a litmus test for buzz in the downtown, if you will. What's happening? How does it feel? There aren't very many true metrics, you know, data or things like that that can gauge vitality. Sometimes foot traffic and sales tax being generated, sometimes those can be metrics, but generally it's something that you really feel when you go to a community. So when we work with cities, we want to first help them kind of gauge their vitality, amp that up if necessary, and then recruit retail, you know, existing local businesses that may want to open a new store, but also really holistically elevate the rest of the small business ecosystem downtown. So we have a very kind of wide ranging approach to improving the retail in our client communities.

What we do

Build a Recruitment Strategy Around Your Downtown

We start by studying your business mix, available properties, consumer demand, retail leakage, visitor patterns, demographics, and walkability. That research shapes a strategy focused on businesses that complement your downtown and strengthen its identity.

Recruit Businesses That Fit Your Community

A thriving downtown comes from the right mix of businesses, not from filling every vacancy. We target restaurants, specialty retail, entertainment, local entrepreneurs, and regional brands, each evaluated for market demand and long-term success.

Handle the Outreach

Our team works as an extension of your staff, identifying qualified prospects and connecting directly with business owners and decision-makers. We coordinate with property owners and support site evaluation so your downtown gets introduced to the right businesses instead of waiting to be discovered.

What you receive

Market Intelligence

We start with industry-leading mobile and economic data, including retail gap analysis, demographics, walkability, and commute patterns. Our exclusive access to Kalibrate means we recruit Main Street businesses with Wall Street data.

In-Market Workshop

Within the first 90 days, our team is on the ground in your community for a walking tour, core team meeting, and stakeholder input session. Together we identify priority properties for adaptive reuse, backfilling, and redevelopment.

Downtown Market Assessment

We combine data, real estate findings, and in-market observations into a market conditions report and downtown property catalog. You also get priority business categories and a community survey that builds public buy-in.

Strategic Business Recruitment

We find the right contacts at prospective retailers and match their expansion plans to specific sites in your downtown. From introductions to site visits, we nurture leads through the full life of a deal.

Capacity Building and Retention

Existing businesses get access to an on-demand training platform with private accounts, peer forums, and direct access to instructors. Recruitment and retention work hand in hand.

Policy and Systems Optimization

We listen to prospective and existing businesses to assess local policies. Our recommendations remove barriers, encourage investment, and create a more predictable, business-friendly downtown.

About Downtown Strategies

Our president, Jenn Gregory, founded a consulting firm specializing in solutions for community development, downtown revitalization, retail recruitment, non-profit board development, governmental relations, and public affairs.

Downtown Strategies exists because communities repeatedly expressed a desire to develop their downtown. And Retail Strategies listened, and we responded, and we created Downtown Strategies for that reason. Downtown Strategies was created to identify and help communities that have a sleepy historic downtown or doesn't have a downtown and would like to see one developed in their community. We're not creating twenty year master plans that will help them dream up this pie in the sky vision of what their downtown could be with no limited resources. But instead, we're coming up with plans that will help them start literally tomorrow with implementing small incremental changes that ultimately lead to big wins in the community. Downtown Strategies help city leaders by creating a sense of place. It is the unique character of a community. It's the fiber of a community. The unique experience that you can have downtown cannot be replicated through national retail brands. National retail brands are everywhere in America. Downtowns are what give communities a personality, and so bringing restaurants and retailers that are unique and memorable will provide an experience to visitors and residents that lasts a really long time. Now there is a shift back downtown. People want an experience. They wanna be at a brewery. They wanna be at a restaurant. They want something that they can take pride in, and we wanna help build that. There are a lot of companies out there that create downtown plans for communities that are unachievable if they don't have the dollars to invest to create the plan that was delivered to them. And what's so different about downtown strategies is the element of getting started today steps, sweat equity steps. If you don't currently have the funding in place, you can get started with Downtown Strategies. When you partner with Downtown Strategies, we begin by scheduling our strategic visioning workshop. The most important part of the process is to be in the community and to meet all of the stakeholders. We invite any community leaders that have a stake in the growth of downtown to a session where together we collaborate on the future for that town. Communities think that their national retail corridor and their downtown are at odds with each other, but we actually think that they build upon each other. Your downtown can be where you have your local restaurants, your local coffee shops, places where people wanna go. People take pride in walking up and down the street, and they wanna invest locally. We want that to be in your downtown. So many of our city partners have beautiful downtowns, but they're experiencing a high number of vacancies. We're seeing a lot of small businesses close, and so city leaders are looking for creative opportunities to backfill these vacancies in addition to looking for long term tenants. Communities hire Downtown Strategies because we give a data driven approach, and we become a part of your team. Instead of giving you a master plan, we wanna give you a process that you can implement tomorrow without extreme amounts of capital or outside investment. Retail Strategies developed a downtown program because communities ask for it. We listened, we responded, and we developed downtown strategies.

Downtown Business Recruitment

Find the Right Businesses for Your Downtown