Retail Alliance can be an Economic Driver for Communities

MTAS Municipal Management and Finance Program Manager Angie Carrier and Farragut Town Administrator discuss the new Tennessee  Retail Alliance.  Tennessee cities are the economic engine of our state. For many communities, sales tax is the predominant revenue stream to provide services to the citizens of Tennessee. The Municipal Technical Advisory Service or MTAS created the Tennessee Retail Alliance in 2019 to provide a vehicle to assist communities in promoting economic development through retail recruitment, to increase jobs and increase their sales tax revenue. 

Transcript

Audio file

Tenn Retail Alliance_mixdown.mp3

Transcript

00:00:05 Susan Robertson

Hi and welcome to In Touch with Tennessee, a podcast of the University of Tennessee Institute

For Public Service.

00:00:12 Susan Robertson

Tennessee cities are the economic engine of our state.

00:00:15 Susan Robertson

For many communities, sales tax is the predominant revenue stream to provide services to the citizens of Tennessee.

00:00:23 Susan Robertson

The Municipal Technical Advisory Service, or MTAS, created the Tennessee Retail Alliance in 2019 to provide a vehicle to assist communities in promoting economic development through retail recruitment to increase jobs and increase their sales tax revenue.

00:00:41 Susan Robertson

Because MTAS strives to improve the lives of Tennesseans by providing the best customer service to our cities, they identified a need for additional support for cities and towns as they work on retail recruitment efforts.

00:00:55 Susan Robertson

The Tennessee Retail Alliance will address this need.

00:00:59 Susan Robertson

Our guests today are Municipal Management and Fnance Program Manager Angie Carrier from MTAS and Farragut Town Administrator David Smoak.

00:01:08 Susan Robertson

To talk about the Tennessee Retail Alliance, welcome.

00:01:13 David Smoak

Thank you.

00:01:13

Thank you.

00:01:15 Susan Robertson

So, Angie, tell us what led to the formation of the Tennessee Retail Alliance.

00:01:21 Angie Carrier

Well, I began working here in 2018 with MTAS and

00:01:26 Angie Carrier

Identified that need that you know, we provide all kinds of consultant services to our communities.

00:01:33 Angie Carrier

And the one thing that we did not address is retail recruitment or economic development.

00:01:39 Angie Carrier

And I wanted to fill that gap and so created a focus group.

00:01:46 Angie Carrier

And looked at what the needs are of our communities across the state and tried to adjust what the retail alliance would be based on those needs and so

00:01:59 Angie Carrier

Just began doing the grassroots effort, talking to our communities, talking to cities and talking to the state.

00:02:07 Angie Carrier

With ECD and some other agencies that provide retail recruitment efforts and created this three-tier approach that

00:02:19 Angie Carrier

Is the Tennessee Retail Alliance.

00:02:22 Susan Robertson

So, talk to us about how the alliance works.

00:02:26 Angie Carrier

Well, it will be working with the fact that we are a nonprofit and of course we're under the umbrella of MTAS.

00:02:38 Angie Carrier

What we're looking at is that three-tiered approach of one providing a database, we're looking at entering into a contract with Placer AI and it is a robust amount of information.

00:02:54 Angie Carrier

With it we can identify.

00:02:58 Angie Carrier

You know the needs as far.

00:03:00 Angie Carrier

Whereas leakage reports anything that, like a community has that's similar to your size and say they have a Chick-fil-A and you don't and and do you have those same qualities that city has?

00:03:15 Angie Carrier

You could compare certain things, and you can identify, you know.

00:03:21 Angie Carrier

Available inventory property creates demographic reports, drive times, circle radiuses, things like that.

00:03:28 Angie Carrier

So that's one piece.

00:03:29 Angie Carrier

Is that for the retail alliances to provide that service to be able to provide those reports to the communities that are members.

00:03:38 Angie Carrier

Also, we would like to do roundtables across the state, just trends and and economic development talk to local developers.

00:03:50 Angie Carrier

To panel discussions and just to.

00:03:53 Angie Carrier

Educate a lot of the communities on how to use those reports, how to contact developers, what are they looking for and just get them.

00:04:05 Angie Carrier

Educated on the talk and the lingo and and how to approach economic development, and the third tier is conferences.

00:04:16 Angie Carrier

ICSC provides conferences on a national and international level as well as regionally, and we would like to create a marketing aspect of marketing the state, but also highlighting the communities that are members within the state and and they can provide their marketing tools, their reports

00:04:37 Angie Carrier

That and provide meeting space for those communities to meet with developers and retailers and to help them recruit that

00:04:47 Angie Carrier

Retail spot that they're wanting to fill, so those 3.

00:04:53 Susan Robertson

So how important is retail to municipalities?

00:04:58 Angie Carrier

Uhm, well, it provides another revenue source.

00:05:02 Angie Carrier

You don't want to be.

00:05:06 Angie Carrier

Totally dependent on property tax and sales tax is a is a good offset I mean.

00:05:08 Susan Robertson

All right.

00:05:13 Angie Carrier

And David knows this with Farragut  since they don't even need

00:05:17 Angie Carrier

A tax at this.

00:05:20 Angie Carrier

So you have the property tax, but you also provide services and needs to those folks that live in your community.

00:05:29 Angie Carrier

They can go eat, they can shop in your own.

00:05:33 Angie Carrier

City limits and it provides that convenience that quality of life that a lot of municipalities look for.

00:05:40 Angie Carrier

Also, you can use it to create

00:05:46 Angie Carrier

A attraction to your city where you know you're getting revenue from people that don't live there.

00:05:51 Susan Robertson

All right.

00:05:51 Angie Carrier

And so those are some options and David you can add to that.

00:05:55 David Smoak

 I think for cities, especially mine, you know 60 percent of our revenue comes from sales tax. And so making sure that you have a

00:06:04 David Smoak

Really valid and growing community of retail sales for us is vitally important.

00:06:11 David Smoak

So This is why this is such a good program for us to be in.

00:06:15 Susan Robertson

OK. So David, you're the town administrator in Farragut, a suburb of Knoxville. Describe for our listeners, Farragut.

00:06:24 David Smoak

It was founded in 1980, we are a relatively young community. If you think about it in Tennessee.

00:06:34 David Smoak

Take care of the housing and the suburbs and the people that were living in the communities out in Farragut.

00:06:39 David Smoak

They wanted to kind of set their own pace and their own way into the future.

00:06:45 David Smoak

And so they've done that and I think the board of Mayor and Alderman going forward has continued that legacy.

00:06:52 David Smoak

One of the things though, when you do that is, well, how do you mix residential with commercial with office, industrial, all the different things that you look at in a community?

00:07:01 David Smoak

And so for us, we've been very fortunate that we have a pretty large regional retail shopping

00:07:05 David Smoak

area in our community that drives a lot of traffic.

00:07:09 David Smoak

We have interstates that go through our community that drives a lot of traffic to our area, and so we have been able to.

00:07:15 David Smoak

Thankfully grow without having a property tax in the town, but what that means, though, is that our retail sales have to continue increasing each and every year.

00:07:24 David Smoak

And fortunately, just five years ago, we were about 50 percent of our overall sales tax revenue or overall tax revenue was from sales tax. Now it's about 60 percent. So that's really grown a lot.

00:07:36 David Smoak

Just in the last five years.

00:07:38 Susan Robertson

So what would you say to other cities and towns about becoming a part of the Retail Alliance?

00:07:44 David Smoak

Well, I think you know for us, we have used retail recruiters in the past and they do a great job.

00:07:49 David Smoak

They really get you in front of a lot of people that you don't really get a chance to do that for

00:07:53 David Smoak

But for a lot of cities, it can be cost prohibitive.

00:07:56 David Smoak

It really is a pretty expensive proposition to kind of hire that group or whoever you may use out.

00:08:03 David Smoak

So I think with the retail alliance and what Angie has been able to put together, I think it's going to be good from the standpoint of cost effectiveness, giving you great data resources to really understand your community and then understand if you're looking for a certain type of retailer to come to your community.

00:08:18 David Smoak

What they're looking for, I think that's a key piece.

00:08:20

All right.

00:08:22 David Smoak

And as Angie said, you know, getting in front of retailers, if we can have a Tennessee contingent that goes out there that you can get more retailers to come and talk to say, Angie or other people that may be involved, I think that will help to drive them more to Tennessee and then also to our individual communities.

00:08:38 Susan Robertson

Oh, OK.

00:08:39 Susan Robertson

OK.

00:08:39 Susan Robertson

So how do cities get involved?

00:08:43 Angie Carrier

Contact me, contact their management consultant.

00:08:47 Angie Carrier

I've got a running list of those that are wanting to join, and as soon as we get the mechanisms, the finance mechanisms set up to receive money, we've got a structure.

00:09:03 Angie Carrier

In order to take that in and and so I'm guessing within a month or two, we will have our database set up and we'll get that moving.

00:09:11 Angie Carrier

And so they just contact their management consultant with MTAS or me.

00:09:16 Angie Carrier

Personally, I'm on the website MTAS website and.

00:09:19 Angie Carrier

Get in touch with me at angie.carrier@tennessee.edu

00:09:25 Susan Robertson

OK.

00:09:26 Susan Robertson

All right.

00:09:26 Susan Robertson

Well, thank you both for joining us today and thank you, listeners.

00:09:29 Susan Robertson

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