Buxton Group Opportunity

As the EDA knows, the City is actively seeking retail/ restaurant users.  In order to help achieve that goal, the EDA/Council have been discussing different strategies over the past year (brokers, developers, city, professional services firms, research groups, etc.).
 
Staff was approached by a research group recently (Buxton).  Buxton met with staff on 10/11/17, and provided an overview of their service offerings.  As the EDA may recall, the City utilized Buxton about 10 years ago for similar work.
 
In summary, Buxton has indicated their processes/ services have been improved/ changed.  Not only will the provide all the data they did in the past (detailed demographics, consumer spending reports, and market maps), they now help cities actually make connections with end users (create custom demographic/data packages for specific end users, and set up initial contact with end users), and they allow their data to be displayed in an online dashboard that's available for existing Ramsey businesses.  Please see attached for details.  The cost for their services is $50K per year.

At the November 09 EDA meeting, the EDA received a full/ formal presentation of the Buxton product.  Please see minutes included this agenda for a recap. 

The purpose of this case to check in with the EDA.  Staff is not expecting/ recommending any direction from the EDA.  If the EDA is interested in further exploring this opportunity, staff would be happy to take that direction.  This opportunity would require a 3-year contract at $50,000 per year.  The EDA has $25,000 available in their marketing budget for 2018.
 

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The purpose of this case to check in with the EDA.  Considering past in-depth discussions with  EDA regarding this comprehensive subject (strategy for marketing city owned land), staff is not expecting/ recommending any direction from the EDA.