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A marketing
strategy for the Town of Oakland takes on two primary components.
The first is the marketing of this plan in an effort to secure
grants and funding for its implementation. The second is the marketing
of the Town's retail and commercial potential.
This document
may in part serve as a marketing tool for the Town of Oakland
in seeking certain grants and other funding to realize many of
the streetscape and other public improvements which have been
recommended. These improvements reflect an assessment of the market
and economic factors which influence Oakland and are responsive
to the desires and wishes of local businesses, property owners,
residents and Town officials as developed through a public input
process. This document may also serve as a marketing tool, by
quantifying socioeconomic conditions and sales/market potential,
in efforts to target select business types and new tenants/owners
to downtown Oakland.
Given the
high seasonal population in the Oakland market area, and the pending
expansion of the daily workforce,(5) consideration should be given
to better attracting these consumer segments, as well as the local
residents, into the downtown on a more frequent basis. One suggestion,
which typically has a low cost and a potentially high return,
is for the Town to assist in developing a weekly Farmer's Market.
A farmer's market is "probably the most successful tool for
the strengthening or regenerating of downtowns of any size, from
the smallest Main Street to the most rubble-strewn inner-city
commercial center.....they encourage and support a local economy,
giving birth to new local businesses and keeping consumer dollars
circulating local."(6) Additional ideas for stimulating downtown
consumer traffic and activity include offering recreational and
cultural activities such as an evening concert series.
5. As the
Oakland FirstPark project becomes fully developed an estimated
2,500 additional employees will commute into the Oakland market
area.
6. Cities
Back from the Edge : New Life for the Downtown, Roberta Brandes
Gratz and Norman Mintz, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
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A. 
