• Encourage community-serving retail and redevelopment of vacant shopping centers by restricting new retail development on the outskirts.
• Ensure that new development is designed to last and be adaptable by mandating high-quality materials and multi-story, mixed-use buildings. This also will use land far more efficiently than single-story box stores with their moats of parking.
• Limit the amount of land zoned for retail (other than neighborhood-serving business) and the size of big-box stores. Small and mid-sized spaces are easier to re-use and create a more diverse local economy.
• If larges stores are allowed, require bonds sufficient to cover the cost of demolishing or rehabilitating a vacant store.
• Regularly poll local residents and business owners to identify unmet needs and wants and proactively seek local entrepreneurs to meet them. This includes manufacturing, service, retail and more.
• Develop mentorship programs and business incubation space to encourage and strengthen new entrepreneurs.
• Require impact fees for new development sufficient to cover new and recurring costs such as road building, traffic control, water and sewer lines, additional police and fire staff, etc.
• The state should enforce its existing sales tax rules that require online businesses with any tangible connection to Colorado to collect sales taxes, just as brick and mortar stores and in-state businesses do. This will enable storefront businesses to compete without a huge handicap.
• Eliminate the destructive competition between communities for retail by negotiating shared sales tax revenue on a population basis.
• Organize a permanent “Buy Independent/Local” campaign or Independent Business Alliance to build a lasting culture of support for independent business, such as the Boulder Independent Business Alliance.

Courtesy of The New Rules Project, which provides tools to help with many of these policy measures.

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