Your 2025 Data Is In: The Metrics That Prove Economic Impact For Downtowns

You did a lot in 2025. You worked towards supporting local businesses, generating economic impact, and even increasing the value of commercial properties in your district. (Just to name a few!) And you did it in a lot of ways: improving cleanliness and safety, hosting events that bring people in, boosting tourism, and encouraging more visits to shops, restaurants, and entertainment.

With your full 2025 spending and visitation data now available, you can see exactly how your efforts paid off and what you should be focusing on in 2026. It’s time to show stakeholders what worked and that your efforts are leading to more spending, stronger businesses, and real economic benefit for your community. By tying your work directly to spending in local businesses, you can clearly show how your investments turned into real revenue - and use those insights to double down on what worked as you plan for 2026.

The good news: you don’t have to guess. We’ll help you identify and highlight a civic leader’s most essential metrics like total spending, spending by category, and a deep dive into which events or initiatives drove the biggest lift.

The Spending Metrics Available for all Districts: 

Here are the metrics to include if you want to show how much money came into the district in 2025 - and what drove it:

Total spending in the district in 2025

Your clearest top-line indicator of economic impact

 

Category-level spending

 (including: Dining, Nightlife, Entertainment, Retail, Hotels, Grocery, Transportation, & Apparel)

Compare year-over-year to show where growth happened, not just that it happened

 

Total spending over time

(broken out by month and by day)

Great for showing seasonality, weekend vs. weekday patterns, and peak periods

 

Total visits to the district, plus average spend per visitor at local businesses

This helps you tell a more complete story: more visitors, more value per visit, or both

 

Event-level impact

Which events in 2025 drove the most visitation and spending?

Together, these metrics help you tell a clear story: not just that activity happened, but that your work helped drive real economic outcomes for the district.

Want to take it a step further?

Add context to the baseline metrics by pulling in year-over-year trends: what shifted across categories, seasons, or key days?  Then connect those results back to what you did: events, campaigns, and on-the-ground initiatives.

Your dashboard can help here too: Layer in supporting insights like who’s visiting, where they’re coming from, and visitor makeup. (And since no one has time to build this from scratch every month, Datafy’s monthly Talking Points help keep the story current all year long.)

A Final Thought: 

At the end of the day, your stakeholders don’t just want to hear that downtown was busy - they want proof it was valuable. When you lead with spending and connect outcomes back to the work you did, your 2025 story becomes clear and defensible. And even better: it gives you a data-backed foundation for what to prioritize, expand, and improve in 2026.

Want these insights for your district before your next board meeting? Book some time with Ian Ross, Datafy’s VP of Civic, now.