Lamar, Colorado Finds Complete Retail Recruitment Package

>>ANGIE CUE: My name is Angie Cue. I’m the Community Development Manager for the City of Lamar, CO. >>ERIC DEPPERSCHMIDT: Eric Depperschmidt, Executive Director of Prowers Economic Prosperity. [intro music] >>ANGIE CUE: Lamar. We’re about 77 hundred people and we’re in the heart of America. We’re on the cross roads of two major highways, highway U.S. 50 and highway U.S. 287. We’d like to say we’re in the middle of everywhere. It’s important for Lamar’s businesses to grow because we’ve seen a declining economy, in Lamar, over the last 10-15 years and it’s time for us to climb out of that recession and bring businesses to town, and help the existing businesses. I learned about Buxton; I started receiving some mail from Buxton and started doing my own research. We started developing a relationship and the more I talked with them, the more I was interested. I shared my interest with our city administrator, with our city council. We went with Buxton because of the package that is offered to us. It’s mostly the customer service, but also to help us with the follow through, so they are really a one stop shop for everything that comes to retail recruiting. >> ERIC DEPPERSCHMIDT: Mainly what we’ve seen a lot of is the leakage reports. Showing us as far as retail, what is drawing people into the community. What are people leaving the community for? >>ANGIE CUE: I use SCOUT every day. I do look at it every day just because I wear so many hats with the city, it’s a good reminder for me to go back to SCOUT every day, take a look at what is there for me, the assets that I have in front of me, and how I can utilize those. I appreciate when people come to me and say, well what about this? What if we had this in our community? And I can actually access that data and find out if it would be a fit for us. >>ERIC DEPPERSCHMIDT: Basically, you know, we’re starting from ground zero. We’re wanting to build up. It’s just another tool to help us achieve our overall goal. >>ANGIE CUE: They have related to us as a small community and they’ve worked with other small communities before so it’s nice that we’re not the only ones. What’s been the most helpful is Buxton can relate to us as a smaller community. It’s not just the big box stores in the big cities. We are a small, very rural community that has a different set of needs. And in fact, they even call me once in a while and say how are things going? I really appreciate that because I do wear a lot of hats in the city so I do have other projects going on, so for them to call and check in and to see how things are going is great. It’s more of a relationship than just a partnership. It’s like a family.