Jefferson Matters: Main Street is embarking on an old-fashioned feet on the pavement face-to-face survey to determine what is needed to make businesses in the downtown district more successful and what new businesses would enhance the downtown.
Members of the Main Street board met with the Jefferson city council Tuesday evening for a quarterly workshop. Main Street vice president Amy Milligan explained that Jefferson is one of only eight Main Street communities selected for consulting help valued at $15,000 in doing a market analysis. Main Street consultants were in Jefferson earlier that day to present date gleaned from census and tax data from a year ago.
Consultant will assist the local Main Street board in designing a survey that can be completed on paper in about five minutes. Local volunteers will hand deliver copies of the survey to business owners in the downtown district and then return the next day to pick up completed surveys. That survey will include questions about what the businesses offer and what owners think their customers want.
A consumer survey will be conducted to find out what customers want, what they buy in Jefferson, and what they leave town to buy. That survey will also be a written survey, conducted face to face, and take less than five minutes to complete.
An online survey will also be available.
“We know Hy-Vee, the casino, the expansion at the medical center, the new McFarland Clinic and the new UnityPoint Clinic will all bring people to Jefferson. Our task is to get them to use our store while they’re here,” Milligan said. “We’re hoping for some insight into that with this market analysis.”
Once the surveys are completed, the local Main Street board will compile results and send them to the consultants for analysis. The board expects to have a report with recommendations in August.
