Tracking the Beach Bags.

Just as retailers follow rooftops, they also follow footprints in the sand when deciding where to locate a store or when to plan annual sales. From opening a grocery store to building a shopping center, commercial real estate developers and retailers consider everything from visitors' ages and income to how long they stay.

Southwest Florida's visitors are especially attractive to retailers because of their affluence,?from well-off vacationing families to part-time residents with million-dollar second homes. "Just the local year-round residents couldn't support a lot of the retail we have," says D.T. Minich, executive director of the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau.

Lynn Dehlinger, retail real estate manager for the Opus Group, a

national real estate development company building Shoppes at Gulf Coast at I-75 and Alico Road, says tourism figures are definitely touted when they're talking with potential retailers. "Florida's just such a hothouse for all the trends that are influencing retail development, and the growth and customer value has been spurred by new development and domestic tourism," she says.

Bass Pro Shops considered tourism figures, in addition to the number of hunting and fishing licenses and catalogue customers in Southwest Florida, before deciding to build a 100,000-square-foot store in Gulf Coast Town Center at the burgeoning I-75 and Alico Road retail area. The store is scheduled to open next August.

"It's an important factor," says Larry Whiteley, manager of corporate public relations for Bass Pro Shops. "Without the tourism there's still a big base of outdoor enthusiasts there. So the additional tourism factor is just icing on the cake. Our stores are major tourist destinations, anyway."

Bass Pro Shops is the No. 1 tourist attraction in its home state of Missouri as well as Maryland. Several other locations are top tourism draws, as the mega-stores have restaurants, giant aquariums, waterfalls and host special events. The Lee County store is slated to be one of eight anchors in the 1.6 million-square-foot outdoor shopping center being developed by the Richard E. Jacobs Group.

When a company like Bass Pro Shops commits, it helps lure others to the area. The Opus Group is making its first foray into Southwest Florida with its 250,000-square-foot Shoppes at Gulf Coast. Dehlinger, with Opus South in Boca Raton, says a key was seeing Bass Pro Shop's plans and understanding the tourism draw that store alone will have on Fort Myers. It's also important to know the makeup of the market.

"What we as developers try to qualify for our retailers is that you've got permanent residents, you've got tourists, then you've got part-time residents-the second-homeowner who lives here six months out of the year," she says. "These people are retired, so they're playing golf, they're fishing, they need all the tools and all of the paraphernalia that goes with those retirement activities. And they also dine out."

Dehlinger says their research has shown that retirees currently go out to eat as many as five times a week, compared with two times a week in the past. Disposable income, family makeup, time spent in an area and age are statistics they provide to potential retailers considering relocating to their centers.

They're targeting home-improvement retailers, discount retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart, supermarkets and more for the Main Street-type center. The Shoppes will have seating areas and architectural amenities such as pavers and lampposts. "It's a gathering space, and not your typical shopping center that isolates the customer," she says.

With two stores under construction in Lee County and another under construction in Charlotte County, Publix considers a number of factors, including tourism, in deciding where to locate. Officials for the privately owned supermarket chain would not elaborate on the tourism factor, saying the information is proprietary. Publix currently has more than 50 stores in Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties.

Minich says wealthy visitors and international traffic supplement the full-time residents and draw high-end retailers. Those retailers include Saks Fifth Avenue, which has locations in Bell Tower Shops in Fort Myers and Waterside Shops in Naples. Carole Stockard, general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue in Fort Myers, says tourism figures were important in deciding where the store would be built, but they weren't the primary determinant in picking the location. Company officials considered tourism and growth figures, in addition to the success of the Naples Saks Fifth Avenue, she says.

But tourism becomes a huge factor when setting the annual sales plan. Stockard examines sales history of departments within the store during the previous season. She also looks at specific demographics, right down to the number of tourists on Sanibel and from where they originate. For example, an increase in European customers would signal that certain items and designers will be big sellers during the year.

"After the store is open, the tourism is a greater factor. Then I would take into consideration where they're lodging and the length of time they're going to stay," she says. "Where the customer is coming from determines the depth of assortment."