2015 BUSINESS WALK: Story Road
Retail economy continues to improve! Parking and traffic conges on are top concerns—Story Road also needs an organized marke ng effort The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce conducted its sixth business walk on March 10, 2015. A business walk is an opportunity for the chamber and partner organizations to get a ground level view of an area’s business climate and additionally determine the challenges and opportunities present to local business. Bridge Bank is the presenting sponsor and has been an invaluable partner in this endeavor. An additional special thanks to RJ Castro and the Story Road Business Association. In this iteration of the walk, 80 businesses were contacted and over 40 individuals volunteered their time to conduct the survey. Many teams included Spanish and/or Vietnamese translators, given the demographics of the Story Road Business Corridor. Three questions were asked by the business walkers during. They were: San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber
Food (including grocery), and Retail. Commercial included banking, services, and other business not acting as retail outlets. • How’s business? • What do you like about doing
business here? • What could be done to improve
business in the area? In order to sort through the data collected for this report, the findings have been organized into the businesses visited into three primary groupings: Commercial, Restaurant/
Restaurant/Food establishments ranged from corner taquerias to local grocery stores. Retail establishments covered a broad swath, ranging from entities such as Home Depot and Target to local jewelry stores and clothing outlets. Over the course of the walk, the area as a whole had an overall positive outlook on the economy and reported that business was either good or improving. Nearly 60% of business reported back a positive growth outlook. Roughly a third reported that business was stable and less than ten percent of business reported that business was worsening. Business owners felt the following issues, if addressed, could generally improve their business and the climate of the businesses in their areas as a whole: