ORANGE COVE – As has been promised by City Manager Sam Escobar, the city of Orange Cove is actively pursuing strategies to bolster economic development within the community.
The most recent instance of this came up at the Orange Cove City Council meeting June 24, when the council unanimously approved a one-year, $45,000 contract with Capital Rivers Connect to provide targeted retail and business strategy services. This will include the creation of a market overview report, a retail fit analysis and on-demand access to industry data.
“I for one welcome (this),” Councilmember Jacob Del Bosque said. “It’s not too costly, and if you could put us in a direct conversation with someone that wants to try to come and grow our community the way we want it to grow in the right direction, I’m all for it, too.”
Capital Rivers Connect Founder Matthew Tate presented to the council about his background, his philosophy when it comes to bringing retail into cities and what services the company can provide to Orange Cove.
Capital Rivers Connect is a branch of Capital Rivers Commercial, a development brokerage firm based in Sacramento. Tate said what’s unique about his service is that it has a municipal spin. He said it’s all about helping cities understand that they don’t just go to retail shows like the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and suddenly bring a Trader Joe’s to their community.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into it, and so when we started Capitol Rivers Connect, we started it with the idea that we were going to educate cities, we were going to help them understand what moves the needle with retail recruitment, what the cities can control, what they can’t control, what they can impact and so on,” Tate said.
Tate walked the council through the process that his business will go through when trying to market Orange Cove to a retailer.
First, Capital Rivers Connect will conduct research about the city, including population, demographics, median income and what people do with their money. The company will also conduct what’s called a “leakage analysis” to determine how many people are going elsewhere to buy products, and what those products are.
This gives the company a good understanding of what kinds of retail establishments to target by being able to show them the earning potential in the city of Orange Cove.
Next, the company will look for vacant sites or existing and empty commercial space that it would want to market to a retailer. Instead of just telling a national chain that it should come to Orange Cove, Tate said he presents them with a few different, specific locations within the city where they could set up shop.
Escobar said the objective in working with Capital Rivers Connect is for them to not only do the analysis, but also the outreach to retailers using their commercial network. Through the contract, the company will help Orange Cove with this research and act as a representative for the city at retail shows like ICSC, Escobar said.
Orange Cove development
The presentation was followed by a lengthy discussion among the council, city staff, Tate and residents related to economic development within the city at large.
Some residents cautioned against only relying on or seeking out major retailers. They pointed to past instances where big box stores have opened in neighboring towns, attracting Orange Cove residents to shop there instead.
“You have to have something that’s going to have our citizens shop here and not go out of town,” resident Janice Holt said.
Holt said the city should also work on bringing in visitors from the highways as they’re headed to national parks. She recommended a motel, which is something Escobar has previously said he’d like to do a feasibility study for.
Another resident said the city should look for businesses that will pay employees well and not restrict them to part-time work so that they’re ineligible for things like healthcare benefits.
Tate said Capital Rivers Connect is not in the business of “shuttering and putting plywood on businesses.”
He said that as someone who travels frequently for business, he would never know to come to Orange Cove. However, if he were traveling to Kings Canyon, for instance, and looked up where the closest coffee shop was, that would maybe bring him to Orange Cove, and then he would experience the city for the first time and see its local shops and community.
“Our belief is, you bring in national brands — now everyone has to clean their tables, they have to hire better service, they have to make more competitive pricing, and a rising tide raises all ships,” Tate said.
