How do you revitalize a declining municipality?
Katie Meyer, Executive Director of Renaissance Covington, is on the front lines of this challenge in Covington, Kentucky. Her city's downtown shares a similar story to many others. An incredible historic infrastructure still stands, albeit empty. Over the years, their downtown has lost a lot of loss in small business and population, but she's working hard to preserve it before it's too late.
Her approach of choice? Smart city initiatives.
That's where our second guest comes in. Mike Grogan, Director of Mobile Strategy and Product Marketing at Cincinnati Bell, has partnered with RC to not only connect the downtown area with wifi, but collect data insights to improve strategy.
The biggest challenge Katie used to face with the revitalization efforts was proving the return on investment. Answering questions like, how many people did it attract or how did it influence business growth in the district? The new data would helped them clearly answer those questions and more.