Businesses are cashing in by marketing to Latinos
Articles
Deane Stokes Jr. and Peter Schnieper don't speak Spanish. But the thirtysomething business partners are hitching their real-estate fortunes to Gwinnett shoppers who do.
By the end of the year, Stokes and Schnieper plan to break ground on El Pueblito, a 45,000-square-foot shopping center designed to feel like a Mexican town square, or zócolo. The U-shaped plaza, featuring a large gazebo, will rise along Grayson Highway (Ga. 20) in Lawrenceville near Simonton Road...
The $5.5 million investment is planned for the center of Gwinnett, far from the traditional ethnic retail hubs of Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Buford Highway. More importantly, El Pueblito strikes at the heart of where a large chunk of Gwinnett's economy is headed.
The county's Hispanic buying power - generally defined as the amount of disposable income held by Latinos - is tops in Georgia at nearly $2 billion, according to a report released last month by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. And it's on track to more than double to $4.3 billion in 2009.
By then, Hispanics will account for $1 of every $8 of disposable income in the county, the report found...
Gwinnett is home to 92,754 Hispanics, more than any other county in Georgia, according to census estimates released last month. And 66,000 residents said they were born in Latin America...
Roughly 10 percent of the 123,858 people living within five miles of the El Pueblito site are Hispanic, said Adrian Cotasaenz, the chamber's corporate relations manager. Within a mile, that figure doubles to 20 percent, he said...
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