City leaders in Livermore began to aggressively execute a plan to turn downtown into a vibrant area where residents and visitors would want to spend time, shop and dine. The city of 83,000, located in the Tri-Valley area of northern California, didn't change over night, but now the downtown sees visitors in the morning hours - getting their coffee and donuts - and late into the evening with patrons of the Ale House and other lounges.

The Downtown Specific Plan (DSP) was created in the mid-1980's, but action on this plan wasn't really put into place until 2004. There were numerous city-wide workshops where citizens could voice their desires for downtown, a consultant was hired to develop an infrastructure strategy and there was a lot of interest from the local development community. The city took action and completely changed the feel of downtown by adding the right streetlamps, benches, creating public gathering spaces and making sure the downtown storefronts were inviting.

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The turbulent economic climate for the last twelve months is beginning to fade. Retailer's confidence is slowly gaining ground. And communities are gearing up to take advantage of increased retail development opportunities.

We would greatly appreciate your thoughts and concerns and what retail programs you are considering or initiating. Your completion of this survey will help us better serve your needs and the results will be shared in our next enewsletter. No individual community responses will be reported. Thank you for participating.

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Data-driven marketing is nothing new, but is starting to catch on more and more with just over 1 in 10 companies valuing data-driven customer intelligence.

A new article from DMNews reports that though CMOs focus on their company's brand, focus on the customer will begin to rise.

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