Site Selection

Selecting the site for a leisure, entertainment or recreation project is critical to its success. A poor site can permanently handicap the project's revenues and profits or even result in its failure. Sometimes moving a project as little as one mile can have a dramatic impact on its business. The old adage "location, location, location" is just as true for leisure projects as for retail and restaurants.

There are a large number of factors that are important considerations to site selection. Some are:

- Accessibility
- Visibility
- Traffic counts
- Physical barriers
- Psychological barriers
- Character of surrounding properties
- Patterns of travel in community
- Location of nodes of retail & restaurants
- Site size
- Utility availability
- Drainage
- Site orientation
- Competition
- Zoning

All these characteristics have an impact on whether a site is acceptable for the type of project being considered, how large the geographic market area will be for the project and as a result, how much business the project will do.

The White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group has extensive experience in assisting clients with evaluating and selecting appropriate sites for their projects. Often clients retain us for a one-day consultation to help them select a site before proceeding with market and economic feasibility studies. If potential sites are located in different areas, we can also develop preliminary market area demographics for each site (in the US) to assist in the evaluation. The cost for one site is included in the one-day consutation fee. The fee for additional preliminary demographic reports for additional sites is $100 to $200 per site.

Sometimes clients are not sure if their market can support a project and whether they should proceed with the expense of a one-day consultation or a market feasibility study. We offer a preliminary market demographic evaluation service for those situations (in the US). Using computer modeling, we develop a preliminary set of demographics for an approximation of what the market area might be. We can then usually tell based upon any existing competition in the market area and by examining those demographics whether the market appears to be a sufficient size to warrant a one-day on-site consultation or more detailed market studies once a site is selected. We have had many occasions when the preliminary market evaluations have indicated the market is too small and have advised the client not to consider a project in that town. The cost of this service is $700.  A $400 credit is then given towards the fee for a one-day consultation performed within one year of the preliminary evaluation.