24-04-2025
PDP's new retail consultant shares insights and strategies for downtown
As she continues to build on her assignment of working with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership on bolstering new shopping and dining in the Golden Triangle, Catherine Timko shared an anecdote of talking with a retail prospect who had dropped any plan of considering the city.
'We got the guy on the phone and he said they passed' on downtown Pittsburgh, said Timko of a prospecting call she made with Cate Irvin, the PDP's senior director of economic development.
She further explained, 'Interestingly enough, he said it was the bridges' that led him to decide not to consider Pittsburgh.
Timko, the founder and CEO of Washington, DC-based The Riddle Co., explained an asset of downtown that can be easy to miss: Its student population.
'The thing I like about students is nobody knows that they're there,' she said, adding they don't show up on Census data and often represent considerable spending power, often supported by access to their parents' credit cards.
It was a more nuanced understanding of the potential of downtown Pittsburgh she added that lead the retail prospect to reconsider.
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