Specifications include, but are not limited to: Task 1: Kickoff meetings Meet with the Planning Department to review assumptions, existing documentation and resources, deliverables, and schedule. Product: Refined questions, research methodology, schedule. Task 2: Data Collection, Retailer Inventory, and Interviews with Business Owners and Customers Gather, research, and analyze information necessary to document the existing conditions in the study retail markets and to create an inventory of retailers and property owners. Analyze metrics related to the health of the retail market in the three clusters areas, as well as the demographics of the cluster’s customer base. The customer base for some clusters may be limited to the immediate neighborhood, but for other clusters customers may travel from other parts of the region. Respondents should clearly indicate how they intend to collect sufficient data on the customer base for each cluster. Metrics should provide insights into strengths or challenges of the cluster, such as change in rents, vacancy, class of space, and any threats to the customer base. The respondent should list the metrics they plan to collect and analyze and describe how these data points will inform the evaluation of the potential strategies. Conduct interviews with retailers, customers, property owners and stakeholders to understand and describe how the cluster supports the community. Interviews may require native language speakers in order to fully engage the business and patron communities as well as property owners. MNCPPC expects the consultant to propose how they will address language issues and include pricing for any required subconsultants in their proposal. Language needs will include at a minimum Amharic and Spanish. Other stakeholders that will engage with the consultant in this task are the County Executive’s Small Business Services office and Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation’s Small and Minority Business Development initiative. The retail inventory should contain a high-level assessment of the types and quality of space that retailers occupy in each cluster. MNCPPC welcomes respondents proposing alternative data sets or collection methodologies to document the existing retailers and each clusters’ core strengths and weaknesses. Respondents should justify how their proposed approach or data will accomplish the objectives of this study. MNCPPC is initiating an effort to master plan downtown Silver Spring that will conduct stakeholder outreach simultaneous to this effort to study international retail clusters. The consultant will, where possible, coordinate interviews with retailers in the Silver Spring area with the team conducting that master plan effort. MNCPPC staff will support and facilitate this coordination. Product: Inventory of properties and retailers in the clusters and a summary of the trends and themes from the interviews conducted. The summary of this effort should include a high-level assessment of the core strengths and weaknesses of each of the international retail clusters and describe how the cluster contributes to the community. Task 3: Evaluation of Tools to Strengthen International Retail Clusters and Minimize Disruption Based on the identified strengths and weaknesses for each cluster, recommend 2 or 3 tools that would be most effective in strengthening and minimizing disruption in each cluster. The 2019 PALS Study contains an inventory of tools that should be the base for this study.