Chris Gibbons
Business/Industry Affairs (BIA), City of Littleton

(The following article was featured in the GIS in Economic Development brochure released by ESRI, Summer 2005.)

In Littleton, Colorado, a new approach to economic development has sprouted. Economic gardening focuses on growing local businesses by providing an enriched environment for entrepreneurs including the use of GIS business data and maps.

In 1987 a severe recession in the area, triggered by massive layoffs by corporations with out-of-state headquarters, drove Littleton officials to respond with this new economic development concept. Faced with empty offices, overbuilt retail buildings, and high unemployment, the city council directed staff to work with local businesses to create good jobs. The Business/Industry Affairs (B/IA) department developed a number of sophisticated tools to help local businesses be more competitive including GIS, database searching, focus groups, and brochure design.

Information, Infrastructure, Connections

The three pillars of economic gardening are information, infrastructure, and connections. Sophisticated information tools including GIS and database research, normally available only to large corporations, are provided to small, growing businesses to improve their decision making and competitiveness. This high-quality information, combined with the development of supportive infrastructure (basic, quality of life, and intellectual) and the creation of connections to universities, trade associations, and think tanks, provides an enriched environment for high-growth companies.

Littleton, Colorado, has used ESRI’s full suite of business-related GIS software tools for a number of years to assist small businesses. Chris Gibbons, director of the B/IA department, noted that 90 percent of the community’s businesses employ fewer than 10 people. The city makes these high-technology tools, which small businesses could not typically afford, available to everyone.

Companies with local markets can provide the B/IA department with a list of their customers and have them plotted on a map with one-, three-, and five-mile radius buffers around the company location. The results are analyzed via bar charts and density analysis tools.

Eric Ervin, the department’s GIS specialist, explained that “the high-density areas are noted and the underlying demographic, lifestyle, and consumer expenditure data is used to build a profile of the company’s customers. For example, a typical customer might be female, aged 21–35, and have a household annual income of $50,000–$90,000.”

Ervin continues, “It’s a simple matter then to find additional neighborhoods that match that profile. We can print the addresses of these new potential customers on labels for direct mail pieces.” The process gives Littleton companies highly targeted marketing capabilities.

“The benefits of GIS to a small company are enormous,” Gibbons says. “It enables Littleton businesses to identify highly targeted customers and get their message directly to people known to have an interest in the company’s product (from consumer expenditure data), who have the money to buy it (from demographic data), and the motivation to buy it (from lifestyle data). It makes our companies highly competitive by letting them work smarter,” Gibbons says.

The benefits-jobs and sales tax revenues-fuel the lifeblood of Littleton. From 1990 through 2003, jobs increased from 14,000 to 26,000. Sales tax increased from $6 million to more than $18 million. “The whole package of services, including our sophisticated GIS capabilities, has helped create a healthy economy in Littleton,” Gibbons says.