By Nicole Sandler
Northside News
On Tuesday, Oct. 6, the City of Madison will host a Business Walk around our Northside community. This event is a unique opportunity for community volunteers to connect with and support local businesses, as well as to provide valuable information for the development of the city’s North Area Plan.
According to Kennedy Turner, president of Blueprint Events and planner of the event, “a business walk is an economic development initiative that, in a short amount of time, allows local leaders to get the pulse of how a business community is doing.”
The half-day event begins with training for the volunteers, followed by three hours of visiting individual businesses. Each group of volunteers will get a map of a specific area on the Northside, and will be asked to visit as many businesses as they can during that time. Each business will answer questions designed to give them a voice while also providing the city with data that points to what might be working well or needs to be changed.
Following the walk, there is a lunch and debrief session for volunteers to share what they learned. Through this information gathering, business walks can quickly help identify individual businesses that are facing opportunities and/or threats, and this may lead to further outreach directing businesses to appropriate resources.
Explained Turner, “many of the businesses we visit have never talked to someone from their city, town or village before. Doing a business walk shows businesses that their local municipality, as well as their community members, care about how they’re doing.”
Interestingly, the Northside Business Walk scheduled for October is not the first of its kind. Ten years ago, a walk designed by Turner visited nearly 150 businesses on the Northside. Since then, many business walks in the Madison area and throughout southern Wisconsin have played a role in city, town or village planning.
“The overall goal of business walks is to help businesses stay in business, while also helping their various partners (city, town, village, chamber) plan for the future,” stated Turner. The Northside was chosen for a walk this fall to help set the stage for its future growth and development as the City of Madison’s North Area Plan process continues.
