RMA - Central Business Districts:  Measures of Success

The CBD: Measures of Success program is being piloted in Fall 2008 and will be fully available in early 2009. The overall objective: provide communities the opportunity to evaluate their retail and service sectors within the central business district in order to identify proven strategies for successful downtown economic development.

The program consists of several components originating from the applied research project:

1. Development of a baseline based on retail and service sector data for the community. I
2. dentification of the potential retail sales of the community as a measure of relative success for the community.
   --Regression Analysis is used to estimate potential retail sales of the community. Potential sales are then compared to the baseline to obtain a measure of success for the community.
   --A comparison between the study community characteristics and those of its 'type'.
3. Development of strategies through an interactive community process
   --Interviews are conducted with key leaders within the community to identify existing policies and organizations.
   --Actions, policies and organizations that could be implemented to improve the central business district are recommended based on the Measures of Success checklist.

Funding for this project was provided by OSU CARES (an initiative of OSU Extension and The Ohio State University to expand faculty, staff, and student partnerships with communities throughout Ohio);, OSU Extension - Van Wert County, and; the Department of AED Economics.