The Downtown Crookston Development Partnership (DCDP), along with City Councilman Don Cavalier and a committee of Ward 4 residents he established, surveyed Crookston’s downtown businesses last year.
DCDP member Jess Bengtson said the survey provided a lot of information about businesses and their thought of the downtown area. “We really wanted to concentrate on the business to see what they like about downtown,” said Bengtson. “What they like about the customer base, where they’re at, where they live, and what they’d like to see happen with downtown. That provided us a lot of feedback on some different aspects we can work on. We will be breaking into committees to look at things like help with social media marketing and building enhancements to draw attention to these businesses. Anything else that they noted in the survey we’d like to bring to the City or other groups that could help with that, such as the Ward 4 committee and the Downtown Crookston Development Partnership.”
Overall, Bengtson said that business owners are satisfied being located downtown. “Some of the really nice results were the overall feeling was Crookston is a good place to conduct business,” said Bengtson. “There were some broad questions on there and some more specific questions on there. But overall, our business owners are very satisfied with being located in downtown Crookston. They like the historical aspect. They like the people that come in, and being central in town is nice for their traffic. Some other information on the survey we found really interesting was there are almost 500 employees downtown, and the 61 businesses that participated in the survey gave us some background of their business and what kind of customers they see as well.”
Bengtson said results provided some areas in which organizations such as the DCDP can support downtown businesses. “I don’t believe there were really any negative things brought forth from the survey,” said Bengtson. “Some of the business owners would like some assistance with things like marketing and promoting more of the town. And hopefully, we’ll go back to having some events to include those businesses, hang flyers again, and draw attention for people who want to go out and shop when they’re here for events. Like I said, some of those business owners would like some help on their website work and social media marketing. We’d like to connect them with some resources that can help with that, whether it be the school, university, or some other organizations around town that do that sort of thing.”
Bengtson concluded that sub-committees from Cavalier’s Ward 4 Resident Committee and the DCDP would start being formed soon to assist those businesses. “Don Cavalier, the Ward 4 City Councilperson, has a committee of Ward 4 residents that he plans to bring together to develop some sub-committees that can work on some of those concentrated areas such as marketing help, building enhancements, or things like that. Of course, the Downtown Crookston Development Partnership will be in on that and branching out to see what we can assist with. Those sub-committees will be coming out soon, and they will also go to the city to display those results of the survey and see what kind of areas we should be concentrating on first.”
The survey was a collaborative project by a committee of residents from Ward 4 and the Downtown Crookston Development Partnership (DCDP), including committee members Brian Follette, Cass Kappelhoff, Sharon Lewis, Ken Myers, and Cavalier. Shirley Iverson and Bengtson from the DCDP also assisted with developing, distributing, and collecting the surveys.
The survey asked 23 questions, and its data represents the 61 participating businesses who completed the packet. Also noted in the survey were the number of people employed downtown (278 full-time, 130 part-time, 20 seasonal) and the types of businesses located downtown, which include one art gallery, one candy shop, two financial services, one manufacturing, eight retail, two automotive, one Chamber of Commerce, two floral, one photography, one social club, two contractors, one dry cleaner, six health care, two printing, one salon or spa, three churches, one fitness/recreation, six insurance offices, seven professional services, one theatre, two clinics, five food/restaurant, one job placement, one real estate, and one youth center.
The result of the survey are below –
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