Feature Story, was located adjacent to the renovated press building. In 2008, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts contracted Delta Development Group, Inc., a community planning firm located in nearby Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to conduct the next phase of revitalization. With design assistance from EDSA, a landscape architecture and urban design firm from Baltimore, Maryland, Delta began a yearlong process of creating a new vision for the downtown area. In keeping with Milton Hershey’s original vision for downtown Hershey, the revitalization plan was based on the needs of the community while reestablishing a balance between the downtown and the surrounding resort, school, medical, and commercial areas. The goal was to make downtown Hershey serve the community so residents and visitors wouldn’t need to go elsewhere. An Integrated Formula As Delta assessed the ability of Hershey’s market area to support revitalization, EDSA evaluated the downtown’s physical opportunities and constraints in preparation for creating conceptual designs. The ultimate challenge facing the team was creating a design concept with the right mix of appropriately sized uses clustered to capture the opportunities presented by the local market. The first phase of analysis would be to profile and measure the local market for real estate uses such as retail, residential, office, and public spaces. In running demographic reports for comparative analysis, the most difficult task for Delta was determining the geographic trade area for downtown Hershey that would be used as a basis for estimating the amount of retail and restaurant space that could be supported. “The big question we needed to answer was, 'How far would people be A statue of town founders Milton and Catherine Hershey on the campus of Milton Hershey School. willing to drive to shop and dine in downtown Hershey?’” said Debbie Tollett, senior associate at Delta Development Group. “To answer that question, we used the original Huff gravity model in Business Analyst.” The Huff model is an analytical tool that measures the probability that a consumer will drive to a proposed new development site based on the distance they would have to travel to get there, the attractiveness of the development, and the area competition. It is assumed that the probability that consumer will travel to the site increases as Many Hershey factory employees reside in neighborhoods like this located in the town of Hershey. www.esri.com Continued on page 32 ArcUser Summer 2010 31