Business View Magazine | February 2018

232 233 PRESCOTT VALLEY, ARIZONA the top places to live in America. “And our population has been booming,” says Ben Hooper, the town’s Economic Development Coordinator. “We’re the youngest, largest, and fastest growing munic- ipality in Yavapai County and none of those metrics are projected to change.What that means is that between the growing population and the areas of town with new multi-family and single-family home construction, there is a lot of opportunity for new retail and commercial development.We have our existing retail power centers that will continue to go to full build out, and we have areas of town that have 15 or 20 thousand residents without any commercial services currently available and immediately adjacent to them.Opportunities abound for developers, for retailers, for restaurateurs to come in here, open up successful, profitable businesses and fill our retail gaps, ensuring that we are providing adequate commercial services to our residents.” Hooper believes that the task of attracting new com- mercial and retail development is made easier due to Prescott Valley’s accelerated permitting process.“I was just talking to a builder who is going to be constructing a new, national chain restaurant in town, and is currently going through the approval process in our Community Devel- opment Department,”Hooper recounts.“And he said what has been echoed to me time and time again by developers and builders–that we are the easiest community they have ever worked with, the most efficient community they have ever worked with, and the fastest community they have ever worked with as far as getting permitting done and done well.Our processes are streamlined in a way that makes sure that we can get businesses up and going quickly and bring their products to market as fast as pos- sible.The gentleman said he has worked in communities where it takes sixmonths to get building permits issued. That’s not howwe operate. “In the commercial/retail realm, in the past year,we’ve seen a Dunkin’Donuts going up; we’ve seen a newChick- Fil-A; a newNative Grill &Wings; we saw the develop- ment of a row of inline shops at one of our retail power