Seaside to offer businesses Placer AI analytics and hired Retail Strategies for retail recruitment

Seaside staff described two vendor partnerships they say will support local business promotion and retail recruitment: a contract with Placer AI for anonymized location analytics and an engagement with Retail Strategies LLC to pursue national retail recruitment.

"City of Seaside executed a contract with a company called Placer AI," Greg McDaniel said. He described the Placer AI platform as an anonymized, aggregated cell-phone-location analytics service that can provide average visitor counts, unique visitors, origin markets and year-over-year trends for a business. "There's no cost, and we can run a report...and email that business or come in and meet with staff," he said, describing a free service for local business owners who schedule time with staff.

A commissioner asked whether the tool gathers names or private data; McDaniel responded, "No. Placer AI as a company doesn't even get that information. It's all anonymous and aggregated before it's even parsed out from here."

Staff also described hiring Retail Strategies LLC, a national recruitment and retention firm that will augment staff capacity to attract national retailers. McDaniel said Retail Strategies is conducting a market study and void analysis of Seaside's vacant properties, representing Seaside at national trade shows and using trade-area metrics that may show larger daytime and trade-area populations than the city-limit population, which staff said can help attract retailers.

Staff said the retail recruitment work is staff-driven with vendor support; the city will share electronic reports and a void-analysis/market study with the commission when available. No procurement documents or contract values were read into the record during the meeting.