In between the long discussions and listening session about elm trees, the Grand Marais city council listened to two reports about potential renovations/ rebuilding of the Grand Marais liquor store at its Wednesday, October 9 meeting.
Using information gleaned from a Grand Marais City Hall liquor store customer survey done this past August, and sales data and a host of state census data, James McComb of the McComb Group, came before the council with a market report for the liquor store.
McComb looked into five areas: Location evaluation, competitive liquor stores, customer spotting, trade areas, retail sales analysis, and came up with a list of recommendations for the council to consider.
Location evaluation
The current liquor store site is centrally located but needs to be expanded, more products added, and made more efficient to stimulate future growth, said McComb.
The current merchandise area is 1,475 lineal feet. McComb advised expanding it to 3,600 linear feet.
As for the storage area, the current storage space is 1,850 lineal feet and located in seven different locations, “Which is incredibly inefficient,” he said. McComb recommended building 1,900 linear feet of storage. If designed correctly, this would be big enough to handle sales items purchased in large volumes, something lacking right now.
McComb recommended expanding cooler doors from the current 14 to 24. This addition would add more storage for cold beer and wine. Another idea is to build a 240-square-foot Beer Cave and reduce the number of new cooler doors to 20.
Customer spotting survey data
In August 2019, 45.7 percent of visitors to the liquor store were from Grand Marais, two percent from Grand Portage, 3.1 percent from Hovland, 1.6 percent from Lutsen; .1 percent from Schroeder and .1 percent from Tofte. Canadian visitors accounted for 6.8 percent with the Seven County Metro Area 18.1 percent and other cities 22.3 percent.
When survey respondents were asked why they visited the liquor store 52 percent said they were regular customers; 44.5 percent said the liquor store was close to home, 20.5 percent answered it was close to work; 29 percent were driving by; 38.8 percent were running errands, and 12.6 percent had other reasons to stop by the liquor store.
Interesting data
Included in the report was the educational level for people ages 25-plus for 2000 to 2019, with estimates to 2024.
Currently, 28.7 percent of the Grand Marais trade area has a college degree while 21.6 has a high school degree and some college.
By 2024 census data estimates, 54.6 percent of the population in northeastern Minnesota will be 65 and over.
In Grand Marais, health care and social assistance employees make up 21.8 percent of the workforce, with retail trade coming in at 20.8 percent and accommodation and food service 18.5 percent.
The number of people living in Grand Marais in 2019 is 1,325, which is a drop in population. But the number of folks living in the county, the trade area—is about 5,400, an increase of .5 percent, said McComb, an area that needs to be looked at to keep sales increasing.
An eye-opener, said McComb, was that there are 2,800 homeowners/ renters with 2,774 seasonal homes in the county. “So you have almost as many seasonal homes as regular homes,” he said.
Average household income in the city of Grand Marais trade area for 2019 is $60,046, with the trade area listed at $71,981 and northeastern Minnesota $74,316. The median household in Grand Marais for 2019 is $48,525.
By 2024 income for all three areas is expected to rise to $73,398 for Grand Marais; $85,217 for the trade area and $88,603 for northeastern Minnesota.
Fourteen percent of households in Grand Marais have incomes above $100,000, with 5.6 percent having incomes $150,000 and above.
McComb said 80 percent of the liquor store trade area is over 21. This means a higher percentage of people here can buy alcohol when compared to northeast Minnesota (78 percent) and the rest of the state (75 percent) that is 21 and over, said McComb.
Competitive liquor stores
Various other details in McComb’s report included the names and locations of the closest off-sale competitors to the Grand Marais liquor store, which listed liquor stores from Hovland to Two Harbors.
McComb said the county has 7,700 pillows (visitor’s heads on beds), with 4,000 located in the Lutsen, Tofte, Schroeder area. “Do all that you can do to get those people to spend a day in Grand Marais and patronize your liquor store,” he said.
This information will be used to help determine marketing strategies as plans move forward to replace the current liquor store with a larger, customer friendly building with more storage. One of liquor store manager Chris LaVigne’s most significant issues is that he can’t buy in large quantities when a product goes on sale because there isn’t enough storage space. Those savings could be passed on to the customer if more storage is added, he has stated at city council meetings.
LHB
After holding a series of meetings with the staff and other users of the city hall, LHB architects and representatives Bruce Cornwall, Mike Fischer, and Sara Phillips followed James McComb’s presentation with some preliminary design ideas for the liquor store/ city hall. Mostly the session was idea-sharing with nothing concrete.
The three talked about the current size of the city hall, the public bathrooms, rental space to the EDA and Chamber of Commerce, and the liquor store.
The current location site was evaluated and given high marks. “Liquor stores do well that are located next to hardware stores and grocery stores,” said Fischer, noting that Buck’s Hardware Hank was just steps away as were two grocery stores, Whole Foods Co-op and Johnson’s grocery store.
The current city hall building is roughly 11,000 square feet.
In its preliminary design, LHB increased the footprint to 14,000 square feet but said council could decide to go to a two-story concept and lessen the footprint of the building.
Council discussed a two-story concept versus a one-story concept with taller ceilings, and from the comments, it sounded like the council wants to stay with one-story buildings.
One design idea is to build new council chambers that would have more space in the lobby so people could come and go, and meetings wouldn’t be so disruptive.
Street front parking was touched on, with talk of changing where the public restrooms are now. There will be lots of things to work on going forward. One thing the council was asked to consider was to temporarily move the liquor store while the new building was being built.
LHB will take the ideas and suggestions they received from staff and council and incorporate them into a preliminary design, coming back at a later date.
In other news:
• At the request of the Grand Marais library, the board agreed to present Tom Christianson with an honorarium for $3,000 as thank you for the many hours he spent to repair the Puzzle Tree, which was damaged by high winds last winter.
• With the deadline looming to pay MnDOT for sidewalks, water main and storm sewer drainage work, among other things, council learned that city administrator Mike Roth sent a check for $2,305,959.79 to MnDOT for the 2020/2021 work. Council discussed ways to lighten the cost of the work, which is $1,531,823.58 more than the city engineer’s estimates.
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