Colorado Springs dangles $16 million incentive to lure outdoor retailer Scheels (Denver: apartments, city hall)

[TCHP]

Why up north? Well, this is about more than simply chasing rooftops. Its about chasing maximum profit. Retailers will go where the customer base has the highest disposable income. These days, that's up north.

[DrDog]

Originally Posted by TCHP

Why up north? Well, this is about more than simply chasing rooftops. Its about chasing maximum profit. Retailers will go where the customer base has the highest disposable income. These days, that's up north.

And available land?

[TCHP]

Nahh, there is plenty of empty retail south of Woodman Rd along with some pretty good sized areas of undeveloped land. For instance, there is a huge triangle shaped area east of Academy, south of Austin Bluffs, reaching out to Barnes Rd that is not even incorporated into the city. It is a city-locked, county area with limited development that has hot air balloons launched out of it.

Now, there may be better tax incentives to build new than to refurb an existing structure, but I'm not too well versed on that aspect of it.

[DrDog]

Originally Posted by TCHP

Nahh, there is plenty of empty retail south of Woodman Rd along with some pretty good sized areas of undeveloped land. For instance, there is a huge triangle shaped area east of Academy, south of Austin Bluffs, reaching out to Barnes Rd that is not even incorporated into the city. It is a city-locked, county area with limited development that has hot air balloons launched out of it.

Now, there may be better tax incentives to build new than to refurb an existing structure, but I'm not too well versed on that aspect of it.

And does it matter what income levels are of people living there? Or is it important to be close to the freeway since it sounds like this is a destination store that will draw people from far away?

[Vision67]

Originally Posted by DrDog

And does it matter what income levels are of people living there? Or is it important to be close to the freeway since it sounds like this is a destination store that will draw people from far away?

A retailer likes to be located where nearby residents have sufficient discretionary incomes. This is why retail follows roofs. New home owners in a newly developed area are likely to have money to spend.

[Belle99]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Primary jobs in manufacturing are hard to come by since many of those jobs have gone offshore, been automated or were replaced by robots.

My favorite ploy to attract new money to any area has always been to make the city attractive to retirees. We bring free money from outside but spend it locally -- coolest deal of all. We put no kids in the school system but our tax dollars help pay for one just the same (free money for the school systems). We need no jobs so there's no tax giveaways to attract job providers. We don't work so we aren't clogging the roads during rush hours. We're settled and don't fill jails and court systems with drunk and disorderly cases. The jobs we do attract are eateries, retail, services and medical. The especially good jobs that we attract to an area are the medical jobs that old folks need; docs, nurses, pharmacies, and medical facilities. I live in the Phoenix area and can tell you that this model works like a charm. We bring free money and we spend it on local things, to include the taxes that give us a great, well maintained road system.

I think the city leaders have their heads in the past if they're looking for manufacturing work; it's been on a national downtrend for decades. The newer players in town tend to be data centers which take advantage of the low humidity and low temps of the city as a natural (FREE) way to cool down massive warehouses of data servers. FEDEX made the move years ago, putting a data center at Northgate and Voyager; Wal-Mart put a data center in near Voyager and Federal. In the FEDEX case they saved a fortune on computer cooling costs compared to the hot humid climate of Memphis. These are clean jobs with decent pay and no pollution.

What holds back the area is TABOR. Any visitor who flies in and sees decrepit roads, lack of stormwater runoff infrastructure, crumbling sidewalks, ancient sewage treatment plant, lack of lanes on I-25 north of Monument, and lack of transit will end up scoffing at COLO SPGS as a place to bring good jobs. Just not going to happen. When Amazon looked at places for its new HQ2 you can be sure that COLO SPGS made their list .... of jokes to laugh out loud about as they looked at truly robust cities.

You are always downing Colorado Springs. You should go back east and see what those areas look like. You will see twice the amount of pot holes and triple the taxes.

[BornintheSprings]

Originally Posted by Belle99

You are always downing Colorado Springs. You should go back east and see what those areas look like. You will see twice the amount of pot holes and triple the taxes.

Hes right though. The Springs has alot of work to go before it can be considered a proper city.


Here is my vision for the Springs in the next few decades.

[Belle99]

It seems like a proper city to me. Define proper city. Does it need to be more like New York City?

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by DrDog

It’s not that bad Mike. The use of sales tax on roads is doing wonders, and the excess tabor money is fixing flood control problems. Roads in an area that gets freezing weather will never look like Arizona roads, but you should come visit and ride along Woodman, Research, or Briargate which are now in great condition.

There has been great progress on the road situation here in COS. In fact, we're now back to my complaint that --and I guess it's partly due to various hills and bluffs -- where roads go and suddenly stop seems to have little planning.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by ryanek9freak

Why do we need another competitor to Bass Pro shops? And why is all the new stuff going up NORTH!? Build some good retail in the city core for god's sake. We have nothing on the west side, save for Walmart.

I do feel that the south and southwest parts of COS don't have much in terms of great -- actually I should say good -- shopping or even hospitals.