Success Stories In Retail Recruitment



Mill Creek, Washington’s Lifestyle Center Finds Suitable Tenants With Buxton’s Help
City leaders in Mill Creek, Wash., 25 miles north of Seattle, knew their area had potential. For 12 years, they worked to develop a lifestyle center for their bedroom community. They wanted to create a "sense of place" for their community and boost the local economy by developing a Town Center, where residents could get together, shop, eat, do business and even reside.

When the time came to recruit restaurants and retailers to their 30-acre Town Center, Mill Creek contracted with Buxton to find the perfect matches for their community. "We knew we wanted something special for this development. We didn’t want the generic kinds of retailers that you can find anywhere," says Bob Stowe, former Mill Creek City Manager who worked extensively with Buxton on the project.

Based on a 5-minute drive-time trade area analysis, Buxton identified 100,000 households and the spending and lifestyle habits of those households. Knowing that Town Center faced stiff competition with a new mall development just 15 minutes away, Buxton took the mall development into account and advised city leaders and developers which retailers to recruit. Buxton identified solid national retail matches for Mill Creek and as a result, the community successfully landed several concepts including University Bookstore, Jamba Juice and Cold Stone Creamery.

The retail identification process was based on the fact that the retailers located in trade areas that looked like consumers in the Mill Creek trade area. Stowe and other City leaders also used the information generated by Buxton to attract desired regional and local retailers to the Town Center based upon the premise that if the spending and lifestyle habits of Mill Creek’s trade area were successful for national retailers, the same information could be used for similar retailers at the regional and local level.

"We had a good sense of what the community wanted in terms of retailers and this validated our beliefs and allowed us to market to quality retailers that may not have given us a second look," Stowe says. Stowe’s only regret is bringing Buxton into the project rather late. If he had to do it again, he says he would start work with Buxton earlier in the process.

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