I've worked downtown since 1989 and have never seen any retail, entertainment or restaurant attempt to promote itself to downtown workers. Wouldn't a downtown ad sheet be a good idea? If Famous sales are sluggish, why not put some coupons out there in a downtown ad sheet? Anyone recall the ad sheet in Columbia, MO?



Has anyone heard a peep out of the retail guru that Downtown hired a year or so ago?

There is what's called the "Washington Avenue Green Sheet" (I believe that is the name). It is a single 8.5X11 green piece of paper with ads and coupons from businesses all over downtown. Curiously, the only place I have seen it is City Grocers but that is the one business that I go to every single day.

I have picked up the Green Sheet in a few spots along Wash Ave. I think I got one at the City Museum one time. Last time was about 2 weeks ago at Sen Thai in the Shell building. It is published by Brian McGowan and comes out about every two weeks.

Matt wrote:Has anyone heard a peep out of the retail guru that Downtown hired a year or so ago?

Who is this retail expert exactly? I must have been asleep for that one.

Midge McCauley was the consultant hired to develop a downtown retail plan. Here's a blurb from a Downtown Partnership update from last October:



Retail consultant Midge McCauley of Downtown Works was in town earlier this week, for a review of progress in implementing the Retail Recruitment Strategy. We communicate with her on a regular basis, but this is her first on-site visit since last January. She was enthused about the progress, and referred to the Washington Avenue streetscape as the best she has seen. She was also impressed with the way that property owners had cleaned up their spaces to make them more adaptable to showing for prospects.

My family owns 2 furniture stores in West County and Ladue, we were approached by a city employed retail consultant several months ago to open a shop downtown. Unfortunately at this time we won't be doing it, but I was encouraged that the city is pounding the pavement looking for homegrown retailers.

^

That's great, very aggressive!

Xing wrote:Wow man! How do you find out these things!?

I heard it from a friend who was talking about it with Brian McGowan.

Brian runs the shuttle to the baseball games from LPG and Flannery's. He usually just puts a few green sheets in the doors of Washington Ave. businesses. If I'm on the shuttle I'll grab a stack for the Terra Cotta lobby. So the distribution seems a little random.