Members of the MidTown Chamber Council are spearheading efforts to put an end to vacant business spaces along Brainerd Road.
At the first Vision For Today meeting MidTown members, commercial property owners and concerned citizens brainstormed about ways to market, lease and sell empty buildings in Brainerd.
“This is an area rich with opportunity,” said facilitator Helen Johnson, co-creator of CreateHere. “You have something that downtown doesn’t have.”
CreateHere economy fellow Bijan Dhanani, Alan Richelson of Business Consulting Group and Velma Wilson of Cleaning Solutions, from left, discuss ways to begin marketing, leasing and selling vacant business buildings along Brainerd Road.She listed Brainerd’s dense residential population – twice that of the rest of Chattanooga according to the Stand survey – and that CARTA’s No. 4 bus route accounts for one-third of all bus ridership citywide, meaning that people are out and about in big numbers.
Johnson led the group to begin identifying assets, core values and guidelines for incoming businesses, suggesting they demand to see viable marketing and business plans and require businesses to commit to maintain storefronts according to a set of Brainerd standards.
She encouraged attendees to identify and assemble the area’s marketing resources into an easy package made accessible to new businesses as part of a bigger support network.
When the group began churning out suggestions for new Brainerd businesses – what would become Brainerd’s new look and personality – the first idea to surface was that Brainerd needs a specialty grocery store that’s also a lunch spot.
“It always starts with food,” Johnson said. “We’re a community that likes to talk to each other and we like to do it over food.”
Once the community has identified businesses it wants in the area, she said, planners can initiate a formal call for businesses and actively recruit them.
Johnson said accomplishments and plans should be publicized as they unfold, though perhaps they’ll be small at first.
“Put them out on the street so the people know there’s something bubbling,” she said.
With the frame of a big picture in place, attendees left the meeting with the simple goals to call city representatives to initiate Christmas decorations and to recruit more business owners to the next Vision For Today meeting.