RETAIL COMPASS LLC

Heather Arnold

Ms. Arnold is the founder and a principal-in-charge of Retail Compass, a firm dedicated to helping downtowns and developers find market-appropriate retail solutions.  Ms. Arnold specializes in retail market analysis and tenant-merchandizing strategies. 

Ms. Arnold has conducted market analysis for urban downtowns across the country.  In Washington, DC, she prepared unmet retail demand analyses for ten neighborhood districts that guided city planning efforts.  Her study of the Manassas, Virginia downtown commercial area revealed a disconnect between the community’s ambitions and market realities.  Her conclusions bridged this gap and resulted in few ground-level vacancies and more vibrant sidewalks. 

Ms. Arnold has evaluated retail potential for numerous private mixed-use developers to ensure a balance between market supply and customer spending.  In Chesterfield (MO), Overland Park (KS), Seattle (WA), Rogers (AK), and Celebration (FL), Bethesda (MD), and Leesburg (VA), Ms. Arnold provided retail demand assessments and design recommendations to guide residential and office developers inexperienced in the intricacies of retail environments.

Ms. Arnold has written articles on retail real estate for professional trade publications and taught retail market analysis at the Urban Land Institute’s Real Estate School.  She is a visiting lecturer on retail planning and development at Howard University ’s School of Architecture.

Education

Master of City and Regional Planning,          Cornell University

Bachelor of Architectural History,                    University of Virginia . 

Case Study - Falls Church, VA

For the City of Falls Church (VA), Ms. Arnold has served as a development consultant for five years.  Within the past year, she completed an analysis of unmet retail demand and a comprehensive retail strategy for future mixed-use development in Falls Church. 

This information has become the foundation of development planning for the community.  Continuing efforts by Retail Compass led to the creation of a retail marketing program for the city’s Economic Development Office.