City posts seven-question survey on Choose Porterville website

Online survey asks what retailers residents want to locate in the city

In preparation for the International Council of Shopping Centers Conference (ICSC) in Las Vegas, the city has set up an online survey asking residents what their top-five choices are for retail development in the city.

“The City of Porterville continuously recruits new retailers to open locations in Porterville,” a quote from the survey states. “Each year the Economic Development Division attends a retail convention along with many of the largest retailers from around the world to recruit new businesses to Porterville. We are asking for the community’s input on what retailers to focus our efforts on this year.”

This year Jenni Byers, the city’s community development director, and Jason Ridenour, the city’s economic development and housing manager, will attend the conference, which runs from May 21-24 at the Las Vegas Convention Center and at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel.

The conference is put on by RECON — the world’s largest retail real estate convention with more than 37,000 attendees representing 58 counties who gather for power deal making, endless networking and innovative education.

The Porterville City Council approved the four-day trip at its Feb. 21 meeting. The estimated cost of the trip is $2,600, which will come out of the city’s economic development budget.

During the 2016 conference, Byers said in a staff report that city staff met with retailers, brokers, and developers representing several companies to discuss opportunities in Porterville.

She said city staff continues to communicate with the contacts made at ICSC conferences to promote Porterville and encourage retailers to locate in the community.

Retail contacts at past ICSC conferences, she said, have included Tractor Supply Company, Panera, Wingstop, Kohls, Marshalls, Famous Footwear, Rue 21, Dollar General, and Family Dollar, all of which have located in the city.

This year, however, Ridenour said residents have listed In-n-out Burger and Sonic Drive-in as their top picks for retailers they are interested in seeing locate in the city.

“So far that’s what we are seeing,” Ridenour said, adding, “We are trying to fill in those gaps and go after retailers that the community requests.”

City Manager John Lollis said there is definitely a need to fill in the gaps, specifically at the city’s Riverwalk Marketplace, which he said shouldn’t be a problem now that the Super Walmart lawsuit is over and the retail company is starting construction this year.

“We’ve been going to the conferences for about the last seven or eight years, but this is a different year for us in this regard because we have Riverwalk,” Lollis said. “Many folks that we talk to have said that they would love to go to Riverwalk and now that Super Walmart is happening we can have a conversation with them.”

In addition to the two fast food behemoths, Ridenour said the city’s recent leakage reports — documents containing information regarding which type of stores local residents are spending their money at that are outside of the city — show that most Porterville citizens are also very interested in stores that sell clothing, sports equipment, and food and beverages.

“You can tell people are driving out of town to shop at other stores and are not shopping in Porterville,” Ridenour said, adding that’s the reason why “we look at our leakage reports and try to go off of that and try to see where we can fill those gaps so residents don’t have to drive out of town.”

Ridenour said so far he has about 30 to 40 invitations he plans to send out to retail stores that will attend the conference. He said the survey and the leakage reports help immensely in letting him know which stores to seek out.

Ridenour said he will keep the survey up for another week.

The link to the survey is https://porterville-gis.typeform.com/to/flgau6.

Ridenour said he highly encourages residents to fill out the seven-question survey.

“We are looking forward to hearing from the community about what they would like to see,” Ridenour said, adding that he is continually looking to broaden the retail offerings in the city. “We do our best to hopefully bring back some new shopping centers.”