Recruiting retail

If you're looking for trendy retailers to open stores in the Corridor, don't expect city hall or economic development organizations to recruit them.

City officials say private developers are best-equipped to bring new stores to the Corridor.

“I think it's reasonable for cities or economic development organizations to work to attract retail, but that's not going to be the major focus for the city of Cedar Rapids,” City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said.

Building a strong economy is - “where we're creating jobs and housing opportunities, we're fiscally sound and we have the infrastructure. If you have all those elements together, retail will come,” Pomeranz said.

Pomeranz was responding to a suggestion by Scott Olson of Skogman Commercial Real Estate that the city and Priority One, the economic development division of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, become actively involved in recruiting retailers to the community.

“Besides recruiting industry, we also need to have a component that looks at bringing retail to the community to improve the quality of life and increase the number of service jobs,” Olson said. “There are a lot of people who don't qualify for the jobs that are being offered by our industrial expansions, because they don't have the skill sets and have to go back for training.”

Olson believes many such people would make a career of retail, and growth also would create construction jobs and increase the property tax base, he said.

Olson, who is running for the Cedar Rapids City Council's west-side District 4 seat, pointed to Pomeranz's previous success with retail development as city manager in West Des Moines and the success that Coralville has experienced since the construction of Coral Ridge Mall.

Pomeranz said he did visit Costco Wholesale Warehouse representatives in Chicago when the retailer was considering a location in West Des Moines, but developer General Growth Properties gets the credit for bringing Costco to Jordan Creek Town Center.

“A city can show up and say they want Costco in their community, but Costco's mostly interested in working with the developer. There often are incentives offered by the developer,” he said.

Pomeranz said there were several instances where West Des Moines worked to attract specific retailers, but he credited Jordan Creek Town Center with helping to bring those stores to the community.

“We didn't recruit General Growth to the city of West Des Moines,” he said. “Company representatives showed up on our doorstep and said they were interested in the metro area. That's when we got competitive and committed to building the infrastructure - water lines, sewer lines and the roads - that allowed them to build Jordan Creek.”

Coralville City Administrator Kelly Hayworth credited partnerships with developers like Gerry Ambrose and the impact of General Growth's Coral Ridge Mall for the development of retail in the Johnson County community.

“Traditionally, we have worked with the private sector to help them facilitate development of retail,” Hayworth said. “The only caveat to that was the development of Iowa River Landing, where we have hired a consultant, OliverMcMillan of San Diego, to help us recruit retail. Our overriding goal for Iowa River Landing is to have it redeveloped from what it was before.”

Hayworth said Coralville actively recruited a developer to make contact with retailers, architects and engineers.

“In the end, OliverMcMillan will not own anything,” Hayworth said. “They are overseeing the development and infrastructure, as well as putting together the plan for how that area develops. We had hoped that a local developer would step up, but that didn't happen.”

Coralville originally hired another national developer, but it didn't work out. The city then selected OliverMcMillan.

Priority One and Iowa City Area Development Group have traditionally recruited industry to the Corridor. Dee Baird, president of Priority One, said that focus likely will continue.

“The Priority One board of directors met in December 2010 for its annual retreat. There were a half-dozen recommendations that came out of that session, and retail was not one of them,” Baird said. “Recruiting retail is not something that we have put into our strategic goals for the near future.”

She also spoke of Pomeranz's expertise in the retail area.

“As he continues to develop his plans for Cedar Rapids, we will look to see how we can play a supportive role in providing the data that is needed by private developers,” she said.

Doug Laird, Olson's partner at Skogman Commercial, also believes retail recruiting should be left to private developers.

“Retailers are looking at the number of rooftops (houses) in a community,” said Laird, chairman of the Developers Council of the Greater Cedar Rapids Home Builders Association. “Developers understand how much capacity a community has for new retail. Frankly, I'm concerned that we may already be overbuilt in terms of retail development, because we have a lot of vacancies.”

Neither Coralville nor Cedar Development, developer of the Coral North Shopping Center, recruited national sporting-goods chain GolfUSA to the complex on the northeast corner of the Interstate 80 and Highway 965 intersection.

“We were looking at locations in Iowa City when we became aware of Coral North,” said Bruce Brooke, who with his wife, Pattie, is a local franchisee of GolfUSA.

They opened five years ago as the second retailer in the center. Buffalo Wild Wings was first.

“We liked what we saw developing here and felt it would be a good location in terms of traffic and visibility,” he said.

With the opening this summer of T.J. Maxx and Shoe Carnival, the development is now full.