DCBID Launches Program to Guide Recovery Efforts

The Downtown Center Business Improvement District has launched DTLA Recovery Compass, a new program to aid in the recovery efforts and collect data for local businesses. DTLA Recovery Compass is a survey conducted every two weeks with residents, workers and visitors to collect data on sentiment and activity that can help businesses make decisions that will guide the recovery.

“We developed this as a way to both gauge recovery and provide useful information along the way. It is a recurring survey of residents, workers and visitors that gives us real time data on sentiment and actions that can guide our efforts in the recovery and that we can provide to businesses to help them in their efforts,” Nick Griffin, executive director at the DCBID, tells GlobeSt.com. “For example, as the surveys come back and they show X number of people are willing to patronize a restaurant if they have outdoor seating or that the biggest concern is cleanliness, then that is really valuable data where we can give to restaurants. That was one of the key elements.”

The survey is conducted every two weeks to better track the evolution of the recovery and so that businesses could make real-time decisions. “We wanted to be able to track changes over time,” says Griffin. “We are conducting the survey in two-week increments and that allows us to see progress in multiple ways. We are planning to continue to conduct these surveys through the end of the year, and so we will be able to see when those numbers start to shift.”

The DCBID is also working closely with the city, sharing the data to develop programs that meet residents’ needs. In addition, the DCBID is including new developments on the virus and information from the CDC to see how sentiment changes as new information is released to the public. “We will also be able to correlate our data with new announcements from the city or the CDC, and we can see how or if that changes people’s responses to our questions about how they are feeling in regards to the situation,” says Griffin. “We have very active ongoing dialogue with the Mayor’s office of economic development and DOT and the other key agencies. We are actively working with them on all of their business support efforts. This data also helps us in that area because we are able to say that X-number of workers want to get back to work as soon as Y happens.”

While the DCBID is working with the city, the information and data from the survey is specific to the Downtown area. “This is not a citywide survey,” says Griffin. “It is very specifically downtown workers, residents and businesses, so we can track it with a level of specificity that is very helpful in dealing with the city.”