Featuring front-line Executive Directors from NYC - Kerry McLean from the South Bronx and Rebeca Ramirez from the Heart of Brooklyn - NJ's JGSC Group, developer Steve Santola and commercial real estate CEO Brian Silbert. (Here are their bios.)

Hosted at the historic Rialto Theater in vibrant downtown Westfield, a Main Street New Jersey community since 1993.

APA 3.5 CM Credits Approved

Agenda (as downloadable pdf; details below)

8:30 a.m. – 9:15 a.m. – Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:15 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. – Opening Remarks & Introductions

9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. – Recruitment Refresher

10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – Gaining Buy-in for Recruitment

10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. – 10-minute Break

11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. – Expert Panel 1: Downtown View, Prospecting & Appeal

11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch On Your Own in Downtown Westfield, 2004 Great American Main Street Award winner

1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. – Expert Panel 2: Tips for Enhancing Broker/Owner Relationships

1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. – Advanced Prospecting Techniques

2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – The Perpetual Recruitment Machine

3:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. – Closing Remarks

Detailed Topic Descriptions: (as a dowloadable pdf)

Recruitment Refresher

Retail recruitment is a process with sequential steps, taught in a day-long session last year. This 30-minute session will present a brief review of those steps, to lay a foundation for the advanced topics on recruitment to follow.

Gaining Buy-In Gaining Buy-in for Recruitment

People unfamiliar with the concept of downtown often become critics, and some of those people are essential to the program’s success. This session will examine the most common criticisms, challenges and objections that you may encounter, and how to overcome them.

Expert Panels on Downtown Recruitment Success

We’ve assembled a panel of commercial real estate experts including a downtown developer, a commercial real estate broker that specializes on downtowns, a leasing agent with 9 years experience in retail recruitment and leasing for Forest City Enterprises, and two downtown recruitment practitioners from NYC (one from an affluent district in Brooklyn, another from a workingclass district in the Bronx). The panelists will share their views about doing business in downtowns, how they prospect for tenants, and suggestions for how you can make your district more appealing to brokers, developers and tenants. Following a lunch break, the panel will reconvene to share experiences about dealing with property owners and tips/techniques for enhancing those relationships.

Advanced Prospecting Techniques

Retail recruitment is, at its heart, a targeted marketing effort focused on those who make and influence the decisions to lease or purchase commercial space. In this segment, we’ll share advanced techniques about who to include on your prospect list, how to identify and pre-qualify them, and how to create a compelling marketing program to attract prospects.

The Perpetual Recruitment Machine

Recruitment is an ongoing venture that requires a continuing effort in order to be successful. This session breaks down the recruitment process to show you the 18 most important recruitment tasks, when to perform them and how to budget for them. You’ll receive a chart projecting the costs (staging, marketing materials, printing, building a prospect list, etc.) so that you’ll know how to plan and what to budget in order to have your own perpetual recruitment machine.

(NOTE: Promotional Partners will receive a special code for discounted registrations, as will Designated and Selected Main Street New Jersey Programs.)

Promotional Partners: