Photo Courtesy of City of Panama City Photographer Doug Dobos
As
Bay County Leaders look to the future for growth and redevelopment opportunities in the area, a major topic of concern is retail or lack thereof for local residents and visitors. Officials have heard and seen numerous concerns in terms of things to do and places to shop in Bay County. Business leaders are noticing consumers leaving Bay County to go to larger shopping destinations such as Destin, Pensacola and Tallahassee. However, a new partnership between Gulf Power, the Bay County Chamber of Commerce and various Bay County Municipalities could be a game changer, placing Bay County back on the map as a shopping destination and further promoting tourism growth in the region. In 2017, an agreement was signed between Gulf Power and NextSite, a commercial consulting firm, to market the area and bring new commercial retail opportunities to Northwest Florida. In late 2017, the Bay County Chamber of Commerce recognized the effort and asked how the organization could assist in bringing those opportunities to Bay County. As a result, a portion of the Chamber’s Share the Future Funds—funds earmarked for developmental opportunities for the County—are being utilized to market Bay County to commercial developers, tenant reps and retailers. This partnership was formed to reduce the economic burden on each municipality with the Chamber paying 50% of the total cost
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for the municipality the first year, 30% the second year and 10% the third year. NextSite’s mission is to provide focused research, market analysis and mapping support, assist in the identification of real estate opportunities for retail development and redevelopment before finally connecting the opportunities to the appropriate retail real estate decision makers. Their customized and unique-tomarket research focuses on identifying critical data that will most likely influence the site location decisions of retailers and restaurants. Through their extensive market analysis, demographic profiling, consumer profile matching and retailer site selection experience, they identify new retail and restaurant opportunities for the market. Once the analysis is completed, NextSite proactively markets and positions retail and restaurant opportunities within the community to their national network of developer and tenant rep relationships. What does that mean for Bay County? It could mean new retail, new restaurants, new jobs and increased tax revenue.
The NextSite Team NextSite’s team will become an extension of the Bay County Chamber’s community development efforts, elected officials and other stakeholders with a focus on the identification of target opportunities to recruit retail concepts that expand and improve the retail tenant mix and retail tax base in the community. The company
leverages the talents of its team and strategic partners to provide the most robust research, market analytics, commercial development analysis and retail recruitment services to affect positive change in the communities they serve. Chuck Branch, Managing Partner of NextSite, has worked with over 1,000 cities, economic development, workforce development and chamber organizations across the United States since 2001, assisting their efforts to proactively recruit commercial development across a broad spectrum of projects. He has also assisted numerous retailers, restaurants, tenant reps, commercial developers and retail brokers over the past 18 years with industry leading market analysis, decision critical research, site selection services and incentives consulting. Doug Neil is a Member of Nextsite and VP of Business Development with Redmont Consulting Group, a Nextsite strategic partner, focused on business development, marketing and community relations. His professional experience includes strategic consulting and incentive negotiation, economic and community development, international banking and corporate finance. Doug’s commercial development experience includes mixeduse, retail, multi-family, senior housing and incentives consulting. NextSite’s Retail Development and Tenant Rep relationships have completed hundreds of single and multi-tenant develop-
