Read the handout (posted in the 2-5-19 folder) entitled “Retail Center: Fremont California, 2008). This documents determines the feasibility of developing a strip mall on a plot of land under consideration by a developer. The consultants (Gruen, Green and Associates) were tasked with determining whether there was market potential for this development
1. There are a couple of different conceptions of “Market Area” contained in the first three and a half pages. Discuss how the “2.5 mile” rule is used, and then why a smaller area was then finally used. Relate this to the class discussion of 2/5.
2. At the end, the authors find that the “supportable” amount of retail space is 203,200 square feet (in 2008). How did they come up with that number? That is, there was a chain of calculations that you can see in Tables 5.1-2 through 5.1-8.
a. How did they determine the “Total available household income” in the market area
b. What did they then do to determine how much of that would be spent on retail by the residents?
c. And how much would be spent by local workers?
d. And how does this retail demand get translated into supportable retail space?
e. Which part of this calculation seems weakest to you? (I have my answer, but yours might be different.)
3. Let’s now replicate the analysis above for some Orange County tracts.
a. Go to the website factfinder.census.gov. Scroll down to get to “American Community Survey” and click on “get data”
b. On the left, click on “Geographies” . The popup menu asks you to “select a geographic type”. Open that menu and click on “Census Tract”. A census tract is a neighborhood of about 1000-2000 homes and so is a pretty good market area definition for a strip mall.
c. Then select California as the state and Orange as the county.
d. Below see the tract next to your name. Select your tract, and click “Add to your selections” and then close the Select Geographies panel
e. In the space for “topic or table name” type in “mean income”. Choose table S1902: Mean Income in the past 12 months (in 2017 inflation adjusted dollars). You will see estimates of both the number of households and the mean income in that census tract. Use these two pieces of data to estimate the total income of the tract.