“Conversations with developers get serious when you can show objective data around how visitors behave, where they shop and eat, and more. After decades with no new development here in Fox Lake, Placer changed the game. We would not have won the development deals we did without its incredible data; it’s paid for itself thousands of times over.”
~ Donovan Day, Community and Economic Development Director
The Challenge
A boating hub that wanted to grow but couldn’t attract new business
The Village of Fox Lake, IL, is a small town of 11k people. A hub on a chain of 15 lakes (7k acres of water), the village was a popular tourist destination in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, but hasn’t seen new commercial development in over 40 years. Donovan Day, the Community & Economic Development Director for the village, wanted to bring new business but struggled when he did so, being told that the traditional 3,5,7 mile population was too small. He knew the lakes had nearly 25k boating registrations a year, and that non-ticketed events looked well attended, but he had little idea beyond that. How could they quantify visits to the town, and use that to land new development?
Donovan knew that Placer had the objective data he needed, but he didn’t expect such an incredible outcome!
The Solution
Trade Areas and Demographics Show High Traffic and Growth Possibilities
With the lakes and city properly geofenced, Donovan looked at visit patterns for the prior year ending Nov. 2021, as well as at traffic patterns and demographics. The results were surprising: Placer showed 800k visits a year, and 240k unique visitors, many coming more than 3 times and staying for nearly 3 hours in town. Similarly, the visitors to Fox Lake had a higher HHI for the area, at $122k, over 38% higher than the nationwide average.
Learn more about Metrics
Excited by the strength of the visit numbers, Donovan then looked at how visitors to Fox Lake interact with the city (or don’t). A key component of this analysis, Placer’s Visitor Journey and Leakage reports, showed that nearly 40% of visitors went to and from home, not stopping to eat or shop after hours on the lake, a missed opportunity, and that there was significant unmet demand across all categories, including shopping, dining, and hospitality.
Learn more about Visitor Journey
The Outcome
SUCCESS: 3 New Lakeside Tourist Developments Worth $335M
Using these reports to prove visitation, high HHI, and to show that spending occurred outside of town (including dining, shopping and more) gave strength to Donovan’s pitches to outside developers, such that he secured 3 new developments in Fox Lake. The first in 40 years, they will bring transformational growth to the village.
In total, Placer data helped Donovan secure 3 large scale developments:
A $250M entertainment district with a hotel, restaurant, event space, dispensary, and 1,500 seat amphitheater
A $65M development with a hotel, banquet facility, short term rentals, fine dining, casual dining, and a marina
A separate $20M hotel
