The International Downtown Association (IDA) is seeking a few good downtowns...

Downtown management is at a crossroads. Those of us in the industry know the value of investing in and managing great downtown environments, we also recognize that without good data to tell our story we cannot effectively advocate on behalf of the organizations doing great downtown revitlaization work.

To combat this issue, the IDA is taking the lead in defining the "Value of Downtowns". They just released an RFP requesting applications from downtown organizations interesting in being part of a pilot research project that will help calculate the impact of downtown management and placemaking efforts. Selected communities will  be part of a cohort of about 12 downtowns and will help by contributing metrics that will allow IDA to analyze, compare and contrast performance across a wide variety of downtown communities. IDA will aggregate the data provided by participating organizations and compare this against data that downtowns find difficult to collect on their own, i.e. value per acre, tax revenue, sales revenue, etc. Participating organizations will be extremelly well poised to advocate on their own behalf with the data and analysis that emerges from this study.

If you would like to be part of an industry-led effort that help us begin to better communicate the value of downtown management, please consider responding to this RFP!

Click here to download "Request for Qualifications for Value of Downtowns Standardized Calculation and Analysis.

Larisa Ortiz is an IDA member and board member and serves on the IDA Research Committee.