Angels Camp Ponders Report Targeting Business Development
Angels Camp, CA – Just ahead of the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, Angels Camp’s biggest draw, council members have development possibilities to ponder.
At its Tuesday evening meeting the council will hear a presentation and vote to accept a recently completed tourism and business expansion study from Buxton Company, which was contracted to perform the work under a two-year $100,000 community block grant. According to the company, if the study is implemented it would create approximately 386 jobs, albeit, mostly for lower income persons.
Buxton, which specializes in developing retail recruitment and retention solutions, has spent months doing a deep data dive and analysis to identify consumer traits of what it considers Angels Camp’s best potential residential and visiting demographics to target.
Drilling Down Numbers To Demographics
Unsurprisingly, Buxton determined that Angels Camp’s core consumer base lives within 15 to 30 minutes away. Consumer spends from the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area currently makes up over 57 percent of the visitors market; up nearly 20 percent from the previous year. The Bay Area, at almost 20 percent, decreased 18 percent. The Los Angeles metro market, currently at less than two percent, is down three percent from the previous year.
According to its latest findings, Buxton points to a subset of “booming and consuming” older, empty nest couples and singles enjoying relaxed lives in small towns within 20 minutes of Angels Camp as the city’s top performing trade area consumer segment. Marketing to them and providing complementary retail draws and other attractions would be ostensible goals for Angels Camp businesses. The group is further described as having active social lives, diversified investments and disposable incomes. Among other distinguishing characteristics, they are seen as balanced shoppers; open-minded and home and garden enthusiasts.
A Draw For A Spectrum Of Seniors?
Another leading subset are the not so well-heeled “minimalist” seniors living in older residences and leading sedentary lifestyles. Cautious money managers they are avid tv watchers with a rural lifestyle; involved in home-centered activities and interested in health-related purchases.
The report identifies upscale boomer-aged couples living in city and close-in suburbs among most best potential visitor group targets. Currently, nine percent of current visitor fall within this category. They are described as affluent, highly educated; living in upscale housing; savvy investors with a philanthropic bent — and fans of college sports.
Currently, 15 percent of the day-trippers to Angels Camp fall within a segment Buxton also identified as a best potential target. These are the lower middle-class baby boomers, living humbly in remote rural towns and country homes with blue-collar and agricultural jobs. Pragmatic shoppers with traditional family values, they deal in cash, not credit and are interested in hunting and fishing.
Business At Hand
In other meeting business the council will consider approving a $68,700 grant agreement with the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to improve the city’s response during a flood emergency. According to the meeting documents, DWR funded five activities that city staff requested. These are preparedness planning; GIS mapping; updating the city’s emergency operations plan (EOP); a tabletop emergency exercise with adjacent agencies with National Incident Management System (NIMS) training for all involved in the training. The tabletop exercise is slated for in the fall.
As part of another regular agenda item, the council anticipates approving an agreement with Berkeley firm Bartle Wells Associates for a water and wastewater rate study, projected to cost around $2,700. According to staff reports, it has been over five years since any major projects have been undertaken either for the treatment plants or collection/distribution systems and ten years since the last analysis. According to City Engineer David Myers, the last rate adjustment was six years ago.
Meeting documents also note that the Fire Department will be issuing letters for weed abatement compliance next week indicating that property owners should target completing removal efforts by the first week in June.
