5 November 2009

Downtown Clinton Residential Survey

Posted by Connor under: Clinton .

As a downtown Clinton business owner I am a member of the Clinton Downtown PartnershipM. The Downtown Partnership recently conducted a survey of residents who live downtown. Surveys were distributed to residents of the following properties:

• Van Allen Building
• Armstrong Building
• Howes Building
• Lafayette Building
• Tucker Building
• Park Towers

90 surveys were distributed and 57 (60%) were returned.

The results are as follows:
I. What is most important to you living downtown?

1. Transportation: 32%
2. Proximity to services offered: 51%
3. Cost: 17%
4. Arts & Entertainment: 0%

II. What type of stores do you wish to see more of downtown?

1. Grocery: 42%
2. Coffee House: 11%
3. Restaurant: 8%
4. Retail: 21%
5. Farmer’s Market: 17%

III. What improvement would you like to see us continue?

1. Streetscape or beatufication: 33%
2. Cleanliness & maintenance: 51%
3. Parking: 17%
4. Saftey: 12%

IV. What is it you dislike most about downtown living?

1. Parking: 21%
2. Noise: 68%
3. Cost: 5%
4. Availability of services: 5%

A few observations… There are probably about 800 people who live in the downtown area and although the residents of those six buildings are an easy-to-reach subset, almost none of them are property owners or residents of single family homes. In addition, there are probably at least a couple of thousand people for whom downtown could be their primary shopping hub. It might be a good idea in future years to commission surveys that expand the universe further.

It is pretty clear that a modest grocery store that sells locally grown produce is a no-brainer for a downtown location.

Transportation and cost being jointly a priority for 50% of residents, one would think that a few modest improvements in public transportation would make not only downtown living but MTA ridership as a whole more useful. For example, bus stop signs with route maps and a few decent shelters. The only two shelters in town I am aware of is the downtown transfer point and the 3rd Street & 30th Avenue ones. I’m sure there are more but I’ve not noticed them. Surely installing them by HyVee and the retail complex on Lincoln Way would be a marked improvement. But that’s a whole other post.

It will be pretty important to see how the responses to question #3 change next year after all the road work done this fall. The copy of the survey shows that the surveys were conducted before October 15 this year while much of the street work was still ongoing.

I would also suggest allowing responses and additional descriptons to be encouraged and included in results. For example on question #4, the most disliked thing was noise by a large margin. What sort of noise? Sirens? General traffic? People in the street at bar closing? Some more detail here would be useful. Ditto for the services offered answer in question #1.

Thanks to the Downtown Partnership for conducting this survey.

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