The city of Vicksburg is working hard to bring retail business to town and to keep them in town.

The Retail Coach, a national retail consulting, market research and development firm based out of Tupelo, was hired by the city almost three weeks ago and will be working with the Vicksburg Main Street Program as well as the city.

Executive director Kim Hopkins said Main Street would be working with the firm for three years and mainly with regional project director Scott Emison. She updated the board on the firm’s intent to evaluate the city and the potential retail efforts.

“They’ll come in and meet with the stakeholders of downtown, and we’ll have a couple meetings with them,” Hopkins said.

She said the firm would also be working with current businesses in town.

“It is going to be dealing with recruitment and retention so they will be working with the businesses that are here also and talking with all of the businesses that are here in town and seeing how they can help them too,” Hopkins said. “And I think that’s important.”

She said the city has had market studies and analyses done in the past, but the data isn’t current, and bringing a firm in was a good decision in her opinion.

The city will be broken up into three retail districts for the evaluations- downtown, from Clay to Washington Street; the Pemberton area, from Indiana Avenue to Wal-Mart and the Outlets at Vicksburg, from the outlets all the way up U.S. 61 North.

She said the first study should be returned to them in about 120 days.

“The studies are going to be really good, and I think it’s going to be very beneficial for downtown and for the whole community,” Hopkins said.

In other news, new board members Harry Sharp, Samantha Blount of Crossfit Bayou Bluffs and Shanon Shealy of Drangonfly, Inc. were welcomed. Returning members Skipper Guizerix III and Dean Anderson held their seats on the board after a number of people were nominated by the previous board and voted on by the downtown-taxing district before the end of the year to fill the board member seats. Members of the 12-person board serve three-year terms and can be reappointed after their term is over.

Daryl Hollingsworth is this year’s chairman, Joyce Clingan is the vice chairman, Dean Anderson will serve as secretary and treasurer is Alice Hebler.