Business Climate

Uptown Employment Base
There are 190 businesses in the immediate Uptown Lexington district. The majority of the uptown businesses represent the Business Services, Retail, Professional, Finance, Insurance, & Real Estate, and Governmental Services.

The Uptown Business district collectively employees 1600 workers.

Uptown’s top employers are:
The City of Lexington
Davidson County
LSB The Bank
Lexcom Communications

Traffic Counts
Center Street – 11,000 + vehicles per day (vpd)
Main Street – 9500 + vpd
Bus. 85 at Center Street exit – 15,000 + vpd
I-85 at Center Street exit – 44,000 + vpd

Retail Sales
Lexington is the leading retail center for Davidson County. Of the $1.39 billion dollars in retail sales generated in Davidson County, 41% of the sales occur in Lexington.

Lexington’s retail sales are higher than our three neighboring cities that are comparable in size to Lexington.

Retail Sales Per Capita

Source: North Carolina Department of Revenue – www.dor.state.nc.us/publications/
2003-2004 figures

Trade Area
During one week in February and early March, 1999, a cross section of 9 businesses recorded the zip codes of their customers in order to access the customer base. In all 3,124 customer visits were recorded. Customers from 170 different zip codes were identified in Uptown Lexington. These customers came from seventeen states and the District of Columbia.

More than (80%) eighty percent of all customer visits were from six zip codes within or adjacent to the City of Lexington.

Source: Uptown Lexington Market Research and Analysis Report - June, 1999

Parking
Uptown Lexington completed a parking management plan in June, 1999. The data below is from the study conducted by John Edwards, Transportation Consultant