blank- LT-SS-2020-003-Ellensburg-Downtown Parks

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Overall, this study looks at a very conservative capture scenario for leaking retail sales in several ways: . Only counting existing leakage in both trade areas and plesuming no population gtowth in the primary trade area (which will continue to grow); . Only counting local and regional population - not visitors (who comprise over 15% of the customer base); . Using a20% capture rate used, leaving 80% of market leakage to continue to leak elsewhere; . Using a very conservative $200 per square foot estimated sales across all retail categories. The supportable square footage under this scenario is 95,000 square feet of total retail in the overall ttade area. Suburban developers are likely to use more aggressive numbers, leaving anyone looking at downtown to focus on roughly a third of this number. Even still, this could support significant expansion of the downtown's retail footprint by simply "freezing the demand" in cunent time. 2.3.5 Key Housittg Market Opportunities Unlike retail markct analysis, housing markets are much less precise to understand. Using the projections for the primary trade area for population and household growth it can be assumed that the Ellensburg market will add 120 additional housing units per year in Ellensburg or 600 by 2020. Building permit data repofted through the City of Ellensburg coroborates this number with the average of 55 new units (consewative estimate) coming online each year. National trends in housing indicate irrcreasing interest in downtown living both with millennials and empty nesters. With Ellensburg's young average age of 30 and large proportion of college shrdents, there is a potential martet for altemative kinds of housing such as lofts, condos and apartments. A simply allocation model that captures only 50% of the demand for future housing in the market would yield 150 new units that do not conform to the traditional single-family house. This estimate for additional downtown housing is a bit more aggressive than the retail assessment but the national trends point toward growth in this arca and new product coming on line corroborates these national trends. More detail as to the location of this housing is shown in the plans below but they will generally cluster in upper floor units in the core of downtown and in new mixed-use development between downtown and Central Washington University. 2.3.6 Hotel Market Opportunities Ellensburg is home to ten hotel properties with a total of 682 hotel rooms. The occupancy rate across all of these properties is 58%, which is slightly lower than the national standard of 62%. It is important to note, however, that this occupancy rate accounts for some ageing properties within the city limits of Ellensburg and that new properties experience higher occupancy. The same is tnte for the average daily room rate in Ellensburg, which stands at $87 per night and is lower than the national average daily room rate at $104 per night. Again, ageing properties can account for this figure. More importantly, Ellensburg has experienced an increase in average daily rates, revenue per available room, and occupancy rates. The Kittitas County Tourism t9