It helped Moline bring in Olive Garden, Panda Express, and Popeye's... and it's working right now to attract even more commercial developments to the city.
Moline has a contract with a company out of Birmingham, Alabama called Retail Strategies. It's self-described as a "team of professionals... tasked to identify opportunities in your market, and create and execute a recruitment strategy on your behalf."
When we had "Breakfast With..." Ray Forsythe, Moline's Director of Planning and Development on Thursday, December 14th, Forsythe said he is pleased with the work Retail Strategies is doing.
"They do great work," he said. "They're great people. They have really good connections with national chains and so they've helped us bring all of those chains in. They're really good at demographics."
"They’ve more than paid for themselves through the construction and employees and the new opportunities," he added.
Forsythe said Retail Strategies has their eyes on two areas in Moline right now:
"They're helping us market the Valley View Village, which is the Menards/Sam's Club area," he explained. "There's a lot of opportunities there. At the Mills site, they’ve been helping bring those tenants in, which are soon to be announced."
As WQAD News 8 first reported, work starts this winter on the former Mills Chevrolet site at the corner of 16th Street and John Deere Road. Forsythe said between 9 and 12 restaurants and stores are going into that area.
To learn more about all the new developments happening in 2018 in Moline, click here.
