Rickey Hayes, who has a contract with the Paris Economic Development Corporation to market Paris to major retailers, told the Paris City Council on Monday about some of his successes and said more new stores and restaurants are on the way.
“If I told you that IHOP wants to be in Paris, I’d be telling you the truth. They’ve been here multiple times. They want to be in Paris,” the 56-year-old Paris native said.
Hayes is in his third one-year pact with the PEDC – a relationship that is under jeopardy because the Paris City Council is refusing to approve the PEDC’s funding for the Red River Region Business Incubator (R3bi) and Hayes’ Retail Attractions.
District 5 City Councilman Matt Frierson invited Hayes to speak about his company in the hopes his colleagues will be moved to reconsider. He and District 4 City Councilman Dr. Richard Grossnickle were the only votes against a June 24 council decision to send the PEDC’s budget back with instructions to ax the $89,000 for R3bi and $33,000 for Retail Attractions.
“The private sector investment that we’ve been able to procure and bring into town is because somebody out there likes the dynamic market you have,” Hayes told a near-capacity crowd, many of openly in Hayes’ corner.
“We are very proud of the fact that we have working relationships with more than 100 developers from across the country. We have worked directly with more than 200 retailers and restaurants and have contacted and provided data to well over a thousand companies since we started in 2006,” Hayes said.
“These relationships are what make our company different from our competitors,” Hayes said.
“I can tell you we will have more retail and additional restaurants locating here in the next three years as a result of our efforts over the past two years. They’re not through coming. They’re coming, and I’m very excited about the potential in Paris,” he said.
“It’s been a joy for us to work here. I love this town. I was promoting Paris before Paris hired me, because I believe in this market,” said Hayes, who grew up pumping gas at his father’s service station in Paris.
“We had customers from southeast Oklahoma regularly, spending their money with our family, and I know this market works,” he said.
Paris’ secondary trade area is far bigger than the city of Paris, or even Lamar County, Hayes said, encompassing southeast Oklahoma, the Clarksville-Avery area, south to Cooper, and around the west side to Honey Grove and Bonham.
“When I tell people that the Paris trade area is not 25,000 people or 60,000 people but 150,000 to 200,000 people, that creates the synergy that pulls that private sector investment into town,” he said.
Shortly after the PEDC hired him, Hayes said, he did a market analysis that examined the volume of sales that Paris loses when local consumers travel to surrounding towns such as Sherman, McKinney, Rockwall and Dallas to buy goods and services that may not be readily available in Paris.
“Retailers use many sources such as credit card and zip code census, buyer programs and other methods to determine what volume of sales are coming from the 75460 code and the surrounding area,” Hayes said.
“Additionally, our firm worked to determine which retailers or restaurants were missing or underserved in Paris. From this data, our staff worked to target retailers and restaurants that were missing in the local retail base and who understood micropolitan markets in rural areas of the country.”
Hayes said his company has worked directly or indirectly in more than 125 cities since the company’s start in 2007. Currently, he said, Retail Attractions is working with 25 cities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico, Louisiana, New York and Missouri.
However, the reality is that with all its drawing power and regional shopping offerings, the Paris trade area “still does not even make the list of the top 50 retail markets in Texas,” Hayes said.
“Paris needs to be marketed constantly by every available means, or your market is simply going to be overlooked for everything except small deals.”
The Paris Economic Development Corporation has never tried to recruit a retail or restaurant into this market, Hayes said. Instead, they hired him to promote Paris to companies looking for new sites.
“They have been very busy working on industrial and manufacturing deals like Skinner and others,” Hayes said.
He praised PEDC executive director Steve Gilbert as “one of the very best economic professionals in the country. He and his capable staff have done a stellar job in this community, as proven by the jobs that have been created here.”