Business mix data

[bplutchak]

I am looking for any data that might help me do a ratio analysis for the community I'm working with. We did a Market Study out of the Main St. toolkit awhile back. That data focuses on retail. We now want to take that a step further and come up with a service business to retail to residential ratio for downtown development. Can anyone point me in the direction of communities that have done that kind of analysis or existing ratio analyses that might be out there?

[Cardinal]

Your best bet is going to be the Census Bureau (economic census, consumer expenditures, etc.)

[southsideamy]

Since you've already used the Main Street Tool-kit you probably already know about University of Wisconsin (which I really like): http://www.uwex.edu/CES/cced/downtowns/dma/index.cfm

No data, per se....but tells you how to get it.

You can also BUY retail and service sector data from various reputable companies such as Claritas. I can't speak for the accurateness of the data, but most market research companies use it and find it to work.

Housing data will be hardest to find, but again, Census might be your best bet.

You might also be able to hook up with a firm that does market analysis and for a relatively affordable cost, they could aggregate the data for you.

[Cardinal]

Since you've already used the Main Street Tool-kit you probably already know about University of Wisconsin (which I really like): http://www.uwex.edu/CES/cced/downtowns/dma/index.cfm

No data, per se....but tells you how to get it.

You can also BUY retail and service sector data from various reputable companies such as Claritas. I can't speak for the accurateness of the data, but most market research companies use it and find it to work.

Housing data will be hardest to find, but again, Census might be your best bet.

You might also be able to hook up with a firm that does market analysis and for a relatively affordable cost, they could aggregate the data for you.

A good market research company will use the date from the vendors, but only to corroborate other observations. There are other threads where I have discussed my concerns regarding the accuracy of purchased data.

I suspect someone in Sand County would be using the UWEX materials - an excellent resource.