Grant helps UDA fund downtown info packets

Development Opportunity Packets are provided by UDA to investors and businesspeople, and each packet is tailored to the party requesting it.

“If someone came in and said, ‘I want to open a women’s apparel shop,’ the information that I would give them would be vastly different than should someone come in and say, ‘I want to purchase a building and develop five lofts in it,’” said UDA President John Simmons. “It’s going to be tailored to specific uses so that people can create their own business plans and fold this into those plans.”

But each packet also will include information about demographics and spending in downtown Springfield.

“We get a lot of requests in this office about what is available downtown, a lot of different types of calls when someone is opening a business. So what we want to do is to gather all of that information so that it is at our fingertips and we can customize their request as well as the information we feel that they need to know as a new business or investor coming downtown,” he added.

Simmons said that the greatest demand for information comes from retailers or office users. Also, developers seeking information on financing programs such as UDA’s façade loan program and the city of Springfield’s business development offerings.

The grant money also will help UDA with other expenses, in addition to packet printing and design.

“We are also looking at computer equipment,” Simmons said.

John Wilson, president of U.S. Bank’s Springfield-Branson Region, said the bank gave UDA the grant money in large part because of the financial institution’s downtown headquarters.

“We are vitally interested in seeing the downtown area grow. As the area grows, we see the opportunity for commercial and consumer loans and deposits. We want to play a role in the overall economic development of Springfield,” Wilson said.

The grant money was a welcome addition to UDA’s annual $390,000 budget.

“We have a combination of administrative income, contractual income and event income,” Simmons said. “Even though our budget sounds like a nice number, we are a nonprofit. All of our revenues go to programming, so we are always looking for income.”

The organization earns income through fund-raisers such as its recent golf tournament and through providing center-city tours for businesspeople, showing them evidence of UDA’s involvement in urban restoration.

Simmons noted that while he would like to see more professional services and corporate locations downtown to support the existing retail and dining businesses, downtown’s renaissance is progressing well. “We got ahead of the game because women’s apparel came back faster than we thought it would,” Simmons said. “I think there are complementary and support businesses that we should look for – home décor, men’s apparel, children’s apparel. And I don’t see roadblocks to getting those clients in here. It’s just a matter of finding the right tenants.”