Maryland Heights: Are you Meeting Needs and Wants of Our Community?

Maryland Heights: 

Are you Meeting Needs and Wants of Our Community?

Problem:
Is our city meeting all of the needs of its residents?


In the beginning:
Students brainstormed needs of people. The list was extensive (I forgot to take a picture of it! ugh!)

Then we searched the online business pages to see if Maryland Heights has businesses to address all of our needs. We used Google Docs to work together. This is what we discovered:

Students brainstormed businesses they had heard of that could address our needs.

We are on a roll!:
Next, students selected the type of business in which to send letters. Students decided it was best to stick to one type of business so that they could write similar letters.

Students brainstormed what to include in their letters to encourage businesses to look at Maryland Heights as a future business location. We looked at Maryland Heights' population for daytime and evening/weekends, available real estate, and building codes. Students also thought mentioning the very little competition they would have since the purpose of our project was to identify needs and wants not being met by our city.

Here is a sample letter:

Getting so close to finishing!:

Students wrote letters to their businesses.  Addresses were found on the Internet. All letters were mailed off by winter break.

Responses!!!:
Wow! The responses have been coming in! Diego's response came in first, within seven days of sending out the first round of letters. Businesses are impressed with the type of information provided in our letters. They are in awe with the fact that the students knew to think about daytime population and building codes. Overall, I believe many of the businesses leaders we contacted found our letters inspiring to consider Maryland Heights for future business endeavors. 

Diego received a $10 gift card to Half Price Books!

Daniel received a lot of goodies from Wendy's.

Lion's Choice sent coupons to Daniel.  Lion's Choice also said they would visit our classroom and that they would host a fund raiser for our school, program or classroom.

Results:

All businesses were impressed with the letters to students wrote. Some businesses are unable to open businesses in Maryland Heights due to proximity to their other stores.  However, businesses such as Half Price Books,  Payless Shoes, Olive Garden, and Michaels indicated that they will forward our request to the department in charge of selected new sites in the future.

One business, Lion's Choice, offered to have a fund raiser at one of their locations, and, to visit our classroom to talk about what it takes to open a business!  We will be contacting them soon!

Who will we hear from next?