Strengthening Downtown’s Retail Base
By Julia Matter
Together with the City of Cleveland and Mayor Justin Bibb, Destination Cleveland, Greater Cleveland Partnership, and Cuyahoga County, we are proud to support Mayor Bibb's plan to reimagine Downtown Cleveland into an 18-hour, 15-minute neighborhood that weaves districts and surrounding neighborhoods into a seamless urban fabric. The goal is to attract modern economic activity and provide a world-class experience for all who work, live, and play Downtown. In the Reimagining Downtown blog series, we will provide regular updates on our progress in implementing the plan and dive deeper into specific projects that move us toward our goals.
Goal: Create a Downtown Cleveland Retail Strategy
One of the tactics we committed to in Reimagining Downtown is:
Complete the Downtown Cleveland Retail Strategic Plan with Streetsense to analyze Downtown’s current retail inventory, define the local trade area, determine future retail business capacity, identify barriers to attracting retailers, and implement a targeted tenant attraction strategy.
Status: Complete
At State of Downtown last month, we released our Downtown Retail Strategy. It is designed as a roadmap to create a thriving retail environment in the urban core and fill gaps in the city center’s marketplace to better serve residents, workers, and visitors.
We commissioned Streetsense, a leading strategy and design collective specializing in retail, hospitality, and real estate solutions, for this project. Their consultant team conducted a comprehensive diagnostic of market dynamics and Downtown’s retail economy. Once the team pinpointed our challenges as a market, they used their expertise in urban retail districts and national best practices to provide recommendations for overcoming them. The Strategy provides tactics that Downtown Cleveland, Inc. can use to move Downtown toward a more vibrant retail environment.
The Downtown Retail Strategy focuses on areas of public and private realm investment, marketing and promotion, and retail attraction and retention. It consists of 15 recommended projects to take place over the next 1-3 years. Our priorities in 2024 include:
Establishing a retail attraction incentive targeting small and minority-owned businesses
Establishing a Downtown night market
Investing in a targeted streetscape refresh
The plan adheres to six key guiding principles for clear and consistent direction across projects:
Emphasize neighborhood building by investing in public facilities and improving the diversity of offerings that meet the needs of Downtown residents
Eliminate intra-city barriers to ensure downtown is easy to navigate by visitors and residents
Focus, don’t disperse, limited resources in areas of existing concentrated business activity and the connections between
Celebrate the waterfront and improve connections between Downtown and the waterfront
Infuse equity and sustainability in all Special Improvement District economic development efforts
Partner with Cleveland’s world-class institutions to support project execution and offer opportunities to reinforce Downtown’s brand
We are excited about the completion of the Downtown Retail Strategy, a pivotal short-term goal within Reimagining Downtown Cleveland, but the real work is just beginning. Thank you for following along and being a partner in enhancing our urban core.
Click here to read the full Reimagining Downtown Plan.
Click here to read the full Downtown Cleveland Retail Strategy.