For the past 22 years the City of Park Ridge, and both its public officials and its business community, have employed a variety of initiatives, plans and even gimmicks in its quest to attract more retail to our sleepy little burg.

First there was the Economic Development Corporation (the “EDC”), a group of citizens selected by who knows whom to come up with ways to attract and keep business here in Park Ridge.  The EDC got enough money from the City to hire a part-time director, Sharon Curcio (at around $39,000 a year, as we recall).  It even was able to keep its meetings closed to the public for all but the last year or so of its existence.  And, as best as we can tell, it accomplished little-to-nothing to keep or bring business to town.

Then there was the City’s economic development director, Kim Uhlig, a pleasant woman who was employed for several years and paid about $120,000 annually.  She, too, produced little-to-nothing in the way of keeping or bringing business to town – despite the arrival of all that new, modern retail space in the Uptown Redevelopment complex. 

And for the past year we’ve had the Economic Development Task Force (the “EDTF”), a collection of 29 citizens which just released the “work product” it developed over the past 12 months. 

We have reviewed that 14-page report and must confess that we expected more than that.  A lot more than that.

What’s missing?

Let’s start with the most basic thing: a clear understanding and articulation of exactly what Park Ridge offers to retailers that stands it apart from its neighbors, especially when competing for those established local, regional and national brands that the City presumably want to attract.  Maybe we missed it, but we couldn’t find even an attempt at defining that “special something” Park Ridge has which should be attractive to retailers.

At last night’s City Council Committee of the Whole meeting, one of the EDTF members who addressed the Council went off-script and said that Park Ridge has higher household incomes than neighboring Des Plaines and Niles.  That should come as no surprise to anybody who has lived here for even a short while.  But we’ve had those higher household incomes for some time now, and they have yet to turn Park Ridge into a retail mecca, or even translate into significant retail sales.

What else is missing from that report? 

How about the kinds of businesses we should be trying to attract, and why.  Even mayoral challenger Larry Ryles has come up with a few target retailers on his campaign web page: Urban Outfitters, Ann Taylor, Forever 21, Clarks and GameStop.  If Ryles can come up with 5 target retailer names, why couldn’t the 29-member EDTF identify its own set of Park Ridge’s Top 10 or Top 20 target retailers, along with the reasons why we want them, the reasons why they should want us, and the way we should go about getting them?

The report prescribes a variety of activities for the City staff and others.  Not surprisingly, a number of those activities require…wait for it…the expenditure of taxpayer dollars.  Unfortunately, the report doesn’t seem to identify any objectively-measurable outcomes from each of those recommended activities; i.e., it is devoid of metrics by which to determine the success or failure of any of those activities the EDTF has recommended. 

Apparently the EDTF members never heard of management guru Peter Drucker’s “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”; or legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden’s: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.”

Heck, why didn’t somebody on the EDTF make the effort to contact the Whole Foods folks and ask them what about Park Ridge persuaded them to put up a store here?  How tough would that have been?

Judging solely from the EDTF report, one year’s worth of work product appears to be little more than a laundry list of ways for existing local retailers to off-load some of their marketing efforts and expenses onto the City, a/k/a the taxpayers.  As in: “Support ‘First Friday’ with wider Marketing help from City” (Page 10); and “Return of façade renovation matching program” (Page 8) – as if the last incarnation of the façade improvement program did anything more than give a few private property owners some taxpayer-subsidized building improvements, with no measurable increase in business and sales tax revenues for the City.

Brilliant!

Given that 29 “volunteers” spent a whole year coming up with this report, however, we assume the Mayor, the Council, and City Staff will praise it with “Huzzahs” and “Hossanahs.”  That’s because, in this town, “volunteerism” is sacred – irrespective of what, if anything, it actually accomplishes. 

Which, in the case of the EDTF, appears to be the resurrecting of more of the same old same old that has served us so ineffectively in attracting retail over the past 20+ years.  We can hear it now: “Get your façade improvement grant applications here!” “Paging Sharon Curcio!”  “Paging Kim Uhlig!”  

Or, perhaps more accurately: “Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!”

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