Hoping to draw more retailers, McHenry hires consultant to analyze shoppers’ cellphone location data

Goal to show city is a stronger commercial magnet than previously assumed, official says

McHenry officials have hired some outside to help draw more interest from retailers who have previously declined to locate in the city, with a plan to use analysis of shoppers’ cellphone location data to show the Heart of the Fox is a bigger commercial magnet than assumed in the past.

The city has contracted with The Retail Coach, a retail recruitment and development firm working across the country, to review existing retail market data in McHenry and the surrounding area.

The consultant, which the city is paying $19,750 for work this year and into next year, also will go a step further by working to determine a “retail trade area,” or the area surrounding McHenry from which consumers head into the city.

The Retail Coach performs such analysis using cellphone data to track the areas from which shoppers in McHenry hail, said Dorothy Wolf, McHenry’s economic development coordinator. No personal or identifying information will be collected by the city through the consultant.

There will be a focus on counting the consumers from southern Wisconsin that travel to McHenry for retail goods and services, the city said in a news release.

The Retail Coach will furnish reports and marketing tools for the city to present to retailers, restaurants and developers and the consultant also will conduct a retail demand analysis to help determine retail sectors and prospects to target with recruitment efforts, according to the release.

“Because we’re a northern suburb with a lot of rural to the north and west, when retailers plug their numbers in, we don’t always hit them,” Wolf said in an interview, explaining the city’s population and traffic profiles have so far failed to attract some retailers desired by residents.

Filling vacant and underused storefronts, along with establishing new retailers in the city, are two of McHenry’s top priorities and have been under the direction of Mayor Wayne Jett, who won election in 2017 and was reelected last month.

“I truly believe this is a huge step to gauge interest by using tools that The Retail Coach has available,” Jett said in the release.

Wolf said the city is open to any type of retail business, from boutiques to larger shops, opening stores in the city.

“We’re working hard at finding what will work here and be sustained,” Wolf said. “We’re hopeful [The Retail Coach] helps us reach some of those retailers we reach out to constantly. They have fuller access to the retailers than we do.”

The city also is trying to stave off lengthy vacancies of properties whose tenants move on, most recently by approving a new storage facility use for the former Stock and Field site last month.

Stock and Field closed all of its stores, the company announced in January, and the city allowed the storage business to take it over despite officials saying retail would have been more desirable. New office space and a fast food restaurant are set to be constructed on the Stock and Field property, as well.

Getting a new user in the former store space quickly, officials felt, will prevent potential tenants of the shuttered former Kmart and Sears building to the north from seeing a vacancy at the Stock and Field site and passing on locating in the city as a result.