El Dorado County's Missouri Flat corridor needs more regional and community-serving retail space to help reduce the unincorporated county's retail sales leakage, a report to county officials said Tuesday.
The county Board of Supervisors reviewed, but took no action on a retail market absorption draft study of the Missouri Flat area west of Placerville. Economic & Planning Systems Inc.
prepared the study for the county to determine the degree of market support for more large-scale retail space in the corridor and the amount of retail sales leakage in the county. The study updates a 1997 retail demand analysis that looked at all types of retail in the county instead of this more narrow examination of regional and community retail in the Missouri Flat corridor.
This new report estimates that the communities surrounding the Missouri Flat corridor and stretching as far as Cameron Park could support 754,000 square feet of regional retail. Once the proposed 433,550-square-foot Placerville Marketplace is completed, the demand would be reduced to 381,000 square feet until 2012. By 2027, the demand for regional space would increase to 615,000 square feet, or 40 to 57 acres, the report found.
Looking at just the Missouri Flat corridor, the current demand for large-scale retail is 554,000 square feet, the study said. That would shrink to 217,000 if Placerville Marketplace is completed in 2009 as proposed. The demand would be 572,000 square feet by 2027.
The report also found that unincorporated El Dorado County is losing $229 million in retail sales to other areas. The largest dollar leakage is in auto service and specialty retail. The most significant loss as a percentage of estimated retail expenditures is in household furnishings and equipment and auto service. The county is losing out in every store category except restaurants and hardware and home improvement stores.
The loss to other areas is growing. Retail sales leakage in the county increased by $67 million in the last decade, the study found.
The city of Placerville, meanwhile, is capturing a surplus of retail sales of about $92 million. But that's less than it used to. Since 1997, retail sales in Placerville decreased by $68 million.
"The large population growth in the western part of the county, and particularly in the El Dorado Hills community, is most likely the greatest contributor to the increase in out-of-county expenditures," the study said.
The county intends to use the study as a marketing tool.
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Sacramento Business Journal - 11:56 AM PDT Wednesday, June 20, 2007
by Kelly Johnson
Staff writer
