| OCR Text |
Show IH ere Are FwbI Results f iff I EMail Studh? By GARY R. BLODGETT News Editor BOUNTIFUL The results are in. at least for the first phase of a study to determine deter-mine if Bountiful-area residents favor, and will support, a downtown shopping mall. THE SECOND phase of the study, to determine if the economics, traffic and feasibility of such a mall are favorable is still to be completed. The study, under the direction of designated developers Machan, Hampshire and Properties, should be completed within 60 days. For a mall to be built, and be successful, all of the study results must be favorable. There can be very few exceptions. THE FIRST phase which consisted of a comprehensive random polling of Bountiful-area residents (by telephone) was released re-leased this week by Bountiful Redevelopment Redevelop-ment Director V.A. (Kit) Bettilyon with the approval of the redevelopment board of directors. The latter, however, have not given their "stamp of approval" to the survey sur-vey results. This could come as early as the next RDA meeting next Wednesday. Meanwhile, the facts are out--and they can be interpreted in many ways. But for the most part, the survey results do reveal that the vast majority of south Davis County Coun-ty residents, not only those living in Bountiful, Boun-tiful, favor a downtown shopping mall. TO BEGIN, the poll included 400 families fami-lies living between North Salt Lake and Farmington, inclusive. The names were selected at random from the South Davis Directory. Although the poll was conducted by Tom Kenster of Kenster and Company, Center ville, those taking the poll were not residents resi-dents of Davis C ounty and had no affiliation affilia-tion with residents or businesses in the county. IN FACT, they (pollsters) were not even aware for whom they were conducting the poll. They were completely oblivious of the opinions of area residents concerning the mall proposal or any plans for redeveloping the Bountiful area. I know, I happened to be contacted by one of the pollsters and before I answered any questions I asked her several questions of my ow n. She w as dumbfounded because she didn't have the answers. I ASKED her for whom the poll was being conducted, and she didn't know. She said she was hired by "Valley Polling Service" Ser-vice" or something like that and did not know her "boss" in this particular poll. All she had was a list of questions to ask those who answered the phone. I found out quickly that she didn't know me. Her first question was, "Mr. Blodgett, are you aware that there are plans for redeveloping rede-veloping the business district of Bountiful, including the possibility of a large shopping mall?" I ASSURED her that I was and graciously answered her 10-question survey with some of the answers being very detailed. "That's what I want," she said. It took about five minutes to complete the poll, not including the extra time we chatted. This independent survey, I believe, be-lieve, was very professionally done. The questions were complex, but meaningful. There is a maximum 4 percent error factor built into the survey and about 10 percent of the calls made by the pollsters are verified veri-fied by management, thus, almost ruling out a pollster "filling in" the blanks without with-out contacting the person. THE RESPONDENT'S name, telephone number, sex and "age bracket" are included in-cluded in the questionnaire, but this informationas infor-mationas well as all answers to the questionsare ques-tionsare kept confidential. Now that the results are in from this one survey, I have to agree that the survey is "an indication" that Bountiful-area residents resi-dents favor a downtown mall and claim, through their ansers, that they would support sup-port such a mall. HOWEVER, the survey did point out a few interesting aspects that may or may not be accepted favorably by the developers. There was very little interest shown by those polled for support of a furniture-home furniture-home furnishing or speciality stores. Apparel stores ranked very high as did the more popular department stores. J.C. PENNEYS was a "hometown favorite" favo-rite" not only for being the most popular department store and apparel store at which residents shopped, but it also ranked high as being a favorite store should a downtown mall be developed. Penney's even outranked ZCMI as "stores which you most often shop." And contrary to what some persons might think, not all of the local retail store money is "leaking out of town." ALTHOUGH ZCMI ranked first by 84 respondents (2 1 percent) as the No. I store in which they shopped, it didn't even come close to Bountiful Grand Central which received 133 first place responses (33.25 percent). Incidently, the 21 percent listing ZCMI as its favorite is exactly the percen tage of south Davis County residents who shopped at ZCMI during a recent 30-day economic study. K-Mart and J.C. Pcnncys each had about 14 percent of the responses for first-place choices. THEN IF J.C. Penneys is so popular, why did it rank tied for third behind ZCMI and Grand Central in the order of where local shoppers spend their money'.1 The answer is simple, if you just look for it. SINCE respondents were ranking their seven favorite stores in order of where the largest amount of retail dollars are spent. J.C. Penneys had only 56 respondents (14 percent) rank the store No. I. But HI respondents re-spondents (21.50 percent I ranked Penneys second; 22 percent favored the store third; 15.50 percent fourth; and 12.25 percent fifth before the figures starting dropping off. But even with the results of the "popularity "popu-larity poll," I'm still not conviced that a downtown mall would be the best thing for Bountiful. I'm still concerned about the detrimental side of the ledger the damages and inconveniences incon-veniences that go along with a large downtown down-town development those that will have to be relocated, or have their property condemned, conde-mned, those merchants who can't make it in a mall, and the change of environment that a mall would bring to downtown Bountiful. Boun-tiful. AND, OF course, I'm still not convinced that a mall is economically feasible. In my opinion, it would be a "nsky gamble" at best. Until I can get "the facts" from the economic and feasibility study, remain opposed to a downtown mall. |
