Montgomery rejects Retail Strategies contracts after members cite insufficient results and confidential data concerns

Montgomery’s Economic Development Corporation and city council voted on July 1 to reject two professional services agreements with Retail Strategies LLC: one for a Downtown Strategies program and a second for retail recruitment.

The votes followed a presentation from a Retail Strategies representative and a lengthy discussion among council and EDC members about whether the firm’s work had produced measurable results, and whether confidential prospect lists distributed to the EDC that day allowed the city to assess performance.

Retail Strategies consultant Neil (Retail Strategies representative) described the firm’s outreach and marketing tools, including trade-area maps generated from mobile tracking (he said one map was run from Kroger data), drive-time polygons, leakage analysis and quarterly business reports. Neil said the firm typically follows a retailer from “conceptualization of their land to opening” and that the full process can take about three years. He told the group: “People are coming to us. They’re coming — I’m getting direct emails. Our engineers are getting directly contacted as well.”

Council and EDC members pressed for proof that Retail Strategies’ work had generated the inquiries the city had recently received. Several speakers said they had just received a…