Data gathered in Yampa Valley study designed to bolster business environment, better bottom lines

Business owners still have two weeks to respond to the Yampa Valley Business Retention & Expansion Study, which aims to understand local business dynamics, support data-driven solutions and inform activities and policies that improve the business environment and competitiveness.

“This allows us to identify trends in the local business environment longitudinally, year after year,” said Keith Hensley, director of existing industry for the Routt County Economic Development Partnership. “It helps the community understand local business dynamics, it supports issues identification and data-driven solutions, and then it just helps us build a better business environment that improves bottom lines.”

Hensley said the study is the first of its kind in Routt County and will be used to inform activities and policies as well as to help better support Routt businesses “so that they can stay here, exchange operations, hopefully hire employees at above-average annual salary, and just become more globally competitive.”

The study, which will conclude Dec. 6, is designed to allow the partnership to identify trends in the local business environment year-over-year and help the community understand local business dynamics. It seeks to identify issues and foster date-driven solutions to improve the area business environment, and ultimately, bottom lines.

The partnership will reward businesses that respond to the emailed study by entering them in three drawings for a $200 gift card.

Hensley said this is the second year the partnership has conducted the study, which takes 30 minutes to complete. Last year, 60 people of the nearly 900 on the partnership’s email list responded to the study. This year, Hensley said, he’s had 44 respondents out of the nearly 900 that were sent emails, as the organization closes in on its Dec. 6 deadline.

“We’re certainly trying to increase that number and get more responses by the close of the study,” Hensley said.

His hope is that the trends in the local business community will begin to present themselves in the next couple of years, and that the study will continue over a long period of time, offering a clearer picture of the Routt County businesses environment and the best ways to retain economic drivers that are moving the local economy. 

The study is part of what the Routt County Economic Development Partnership takes on in its Business Retention and Expansion Program, which includes on-site visits where the information gathered provides targeted support to local businesses. All data gathered throughout the year from the on-site visits and the study are summarized in a comprehensive annual BR&E Report.

Hensley said while the study is new to the partnership, this type of study in nothing new to other economic development organizations.

“Economic development organizations do release studies and surveys to try to track a business environment … in that regard, it’s certainly not anything that’s new or novel,” Hensley said. “We’re still young as an organization, so this is new for us. I don’t think in Routt County anyone’s really done this. Nobody has tested to see what the business environment looks like, and then release a study — until now.”