SUMMERDALE - The Town of Summerdale voted during a special February council meeting to sign a contract with the Buxton Group to help grow the area’s businesses.

“This is a company that will help Summerdale to secure the analytical data that we need for clients that would possibly be interested in locating to our area,” said Mayor David Wilson. “They’re a very sophisticated organization that would contract with the Town of Summerdale to help us to have more businesses that would be attracted to our area.”

The Buxton Groups operates by gathering analytical data from an area through cell phone searches by tracking where people in an area want to shop, what they’re looking for, and the distances they are willing to drive for a certain type of store, restaurant, or venue. After researching the collected data, The Buxton Group can then put a municipality in contact with the types of businesses that would benefit its community. The study isn’t limited to within Summerdale, and would focus on approximately a 20-mile drawing area.

“This would be an opportunity to market the town,” said Wilson. “We can start having businesses coming into town, and we’ll be going after these businesses instead of just sitting there and letting them go to other places. This group is able to produce data about your town and target businesses that are looking for that type of information. To my understanding this company has an impeccable resume and success rate.”

The cost for the services is a three-year contract of $50,000 per year, though the company states with one successful new business the year would be paid for by taxes brought back into the community. It typically takes until the second year before results are fully seen as the first year focuses on gathering data and contacting interested businesses.

“The company guarantees 20 businesses that would be looking for this area by 2020, followed by 20 businesses per year,” Wilson said.

The Buxton Group contract includes 25 apps to be handed out to new businesses that will help them market their business themselves.

“It’s all analytical, it’s all data-driven,” said Chief Kevin Brock, who was instrumental in introducing The Buxton Group to the council. “What they do is look in our jurisdiction to see where our citizens spend their money, where they drive, how far they’ll drive to go to a different business such as Starbucks, and all that information goes into their database, and that will tell us what businesses to go after and which one’s people would not be interested in. That way you don’t waste your time going after a supermarket that will not come here.”

The council was unanimous in voting to sign the contract with The Buxton Group, stating that sometimes you have to “spend some money to see the benefits of it.”