Cape Girardeau benefits from influx of sales tax revenue from shoppers

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - As we enter deep into the holiday season, you might see more traffic in Cape Girardeau.

With Cape Girardeau as the largest city in the region, many folks will make the trip to do their shopping here.

The more people shop area stores and restaurants, the more sales tax revenue will add up for the city which goes to help the local economy in a variety of ways.

“We are located here centrally, and we are able to provide everything from the eclectic type shops to even those people that want to go in and do things in antique shops, or the little boutiques. So, we have it all,” Visit Cape Executive Director Brenda Newbern said.

“We really are a destination for people across the entire community to shop local, mark those things off their Christmas shopping list, as well as, grabbing a bite to eat at many of our dining establishments, grabbing a drink and doing one of the fun activities in our area if you have family in town visiting,” Old Town Cape Executive Director Liz Haynes said.

Newbern said sales taxes collected from across the city will go back in the community to further benefit the people here.

“It’s going to go into our city’s budgeting,” Newbern said. “So, in that line item, wherever they can utilize it to the best of their ability will be used to help enhance the city. If you think about it in general across the line, it’s going to help in some ways help our taxes. Eventually it will help our personal property taxes come down. There’s lots of residual effects to people spending their money in our city.”

Haynes said the Old Town Cape organization are the administrative managers for the Downtown Community Improvement District. Sales taxes collected then goes back in the community to help with a variety of ways including safety and development.

“A portion of the sales tax revenue from a portion of the businesses within the Old Town Cape district all goes into a bucket, for lack of better words,” Haynes said. “Then, we have a CID board of directors that decides how that funding should be appropriated. There are things like litter pickup, we’ve recently added billboards to promote our downtown community, we’ve added some cameras for safety in our downtown, we support additional safety patrols from the Cape Girardeau Police Department. So, all different types of things that Old Town Cape manages administratively that go back to benefit our downtown community really benefit from that sales tax revenue that’s coming in, especially during the holidays but all throughout the entire year as well.”

Haynes also said she has seen the downtown area continue to grow and thrive with new businesses and new residential properties over the years.

“It’s really exciting to see a multitude of entrepreneurs wanting to start their business here,” Haynes said. “Also, on the residential side, we’ve had a huge demand for living in our downtown community.”

For more information about shopping, dining and events, you can find that on the Visit Cape website and the Old Town Cape website.

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