8B - Downtown Plan Update - Laserfiche WebLink

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There is sometimes a desire to try and provide everything to everyone and, in a sense, compete with a regional center like Baxter for customers. Giving in to this desire is a losing strategy, while keeping focused on what Pequot Lakes does best is a key to long-term success. Businesses in Pequot Lakes are most competitive when offering either a unique experience or a custom and high-quality service. These are the things that bring people to town over and over again and capture both a tourist and a local market. The Downtown will struggle over the long run to sustain offerings that directly compete with those offered in the Brainerd/Baxter Regional Center. The large retailers such as Wal-Mart,Target, Best Buy, Cub Foods, Super 1, Home Depot and Menards have agglomerated in Baxter along the TH 371 corridor. These places are highly accessible to the residents of Pequot Lakes. That fact will stifle the size and scale of non-specialized offerings the Pequot Lakes neighborhood can support. The downtown, when fully developed, will be a significant regional attraction if the experience is different, and more pleasant, than the experience of shopping in other downtowns. The small, locally- owned shops currently provide a unique mix of products and services. This uniqueness should be capitalized on to capture a larger share of the regional market. Pequot Lakes will not be able to compete regionally for some offerings. In these instances, the convenience of Downtown, combined with the personalized service, can help retain local shoppers that may be enticed to go other places. The Downtown must maintain a mix of unique offerings that appeal to a regional market as well as convenience and quality service offerings that will retain local customers. Key#4: Reduce the seasonality of the downtown by ncreasing the number of • • • within the city's traditional neighborhoods with convenient access to downtown. In a tourism-based economy,the strong summer months can sometimes be augmented with Holiday shopping and an occasional winter festival. Frequently this isn't enough to support a business. Promoting some offerings that would cater to local needs, while at the same time creating opportunities for more housing units within walking distance of Downtown along with better connections, creates a supply/demand relationship that will generate more opportunity for growth in the downtown. • • that the highest • the City over the long-term is to improve the use of existing infrastructure, not the expansion of horizontal growth on the periphery of • Pequot Lakes Downtown Plan— Updated November 2014 10