Many neighborhood commercial districts grow by chance. Some property owners may seek out tenants solely on their ability to pay rent, while others look for businesses that will have the right “character” for a neighborhood, while others still are content to take a loss and sit on vacant property waiting for a big future buyout that may or may not occur. Commercial districts like these take what they can get and are the accumulation of hundreds of smaller decisions made in isolation or with minimal input from other property owners, businesses and neighbors. Barracks Row, fortunately, is not one of those places; it strives to grow by choice, not chance.

One of the major advantages suburban shopping centers have over urban neighborhood commercial districts is centralized management – one property management company has the luxury of looking at the retail mix holistically. If you already have a dozen clothing stores, you go after a hair salon or a toy store. You market the entire shopping center as a single destination where all a shopper’s needs can be met. Talk about growing by choice!

Neighborhood commercial districts can strive for the same kind of holistic approach – it just takes a lot more coordination and cooperation. Barracks Row Main Street recently contracted with economic development specialist Rick Ferrell to help take stock of the existing properties and businesses on the street and create a strategy for attracting and maintaining the types of businesses that are needed by the community, complementary of existing businesses and economically viable.

Ferrell – owner and principal at Retail Market Answers LLC in Wilmington, Delaware – has an extensive background in real estate development with an emphasis on managing retail portfolios. After a long career working for large, private developers, such as the Rouse Company and Forest City, Ferrell started his own consulting firm about six years ago. His clients mostly consist of towns and cities on the East Coast between Washington, DC, and New York City, and his primary goal and objective is to bring private sector best practices and strategies to public projects. Ferrell’s work is very practical and implementation focused, aiming to give localities a specific path to follow based on a community’s existing strengths and assets.

Ferrell is excited to be working on Capitol Hill, as many of his favorite past projects have dealt with historic preservation and adaptive reuse. He is also glad to see how much activity already exists on the street and points out that many neighborhood commercial areas aspire to our current business mix, foot traffic and general buzz. However, he acknowledges that there are several issues and hurdles to overcome for the area to continue evolving in a positive direction.

First of all, the real estate boom of recent years has caused a range of difficulties all over the East Coast. As property values rose and buildings changed hands at ever increasing prices, lease rates went up, putting a burden on small businesses. The potential lease revenue of a property should, in theory, drive land prices, but buyers for many years have not acted rationally, paying speculative prices with the expectation that property values would continue to rise. While the market is still strong here and land prices continue to reflect unrealistic lease revenues, Ferrell does expect a cooling of the market to alleviate some of this pressure soon.

Another dilemma pondered by many community members is the balance between retail and restaurants along the street. There has been fear of creating a “new Adams Morgan” on Capitol Hill, dominated by restaurants and bars and lacking in retail. Ferrell is aware of this concern and says that there is really no general way to address the issue. In his experience, what constitutes a healthy balance changes from place to place. For example, he has worked in a community in New Jersey where a majority of the commercial space is occupied by restaurants. Rather than acting as a barrier to retail, the restaurants have been leveraged by the community to support retail. Ferrell says the key is to spread restaurants all along a corridor and seek retailers who are willing to stay open later into the evening, capturing the foot traffic from diners. At first glance, he sees the restaurants of Barracks Row as an asset for attracting other types of businesses to the street.

The first step of his work will be to compile a complete inventory of existing commercial space and businesses. If the community has an accurate database, it will be better equipped to market available spaces and match them to business types that make sense with their neighbors.

The second step is to create a strategic merchandising plan. This will involve consumer and property owner surveys to determine what types of businesses are needed and desired, the retail types that are currently underrepresented and would complement existing businesses, and an analysis of what types of businesses will be most economically viable. Once compiled, this information can be accessed any time a commercial space comes up for lease to determine what type of business would be most successful there.

Naturally, such a strategy will only work if a majority of the property owners buys into it and agrees to follow it. One of Ferrell’s first efforts will be to interview all of the property owners on the street to gauge their current leasing strategies and get them on board with the idea that cooperative leasing strategies lead to more success for everyone.

Barracks Row Main Street is a nonprofit organization revitalizing Eighth Street SE between Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street in Washington, DC. For more information or to become a volunteer, please visit www.barracksrow.org. Jeff Davis can be reached at jeffreycharlesdavis@yahoo.com.