Portrait of Birmingham by the (phone) numbers

By David Hohendorf

A portrait of downtown Birmingham, drawn with data provided by a location analytics firm, was unveiled at the Thursday, August 7, monthly meeting of the Business Shopping District (BSD) board of directors.

The detailed look at visitors to the city in the past year was prepared by the Main Street America organization which works with municipalities nation-wide. The report was based on data developed by the Placer, ai firm that works nationally for major firms and communities by smartphone tracking of users’ location and duration of stay. Data collected by the firm is refined enough to exclude duplicates of the same phones when analyzing information about who is visiting the city on a given day. The reports produced by the firm are used by businesses to plan in order to cater to those coming into downtown areas.

In 2024 Birmingham’s downtown business community had 1.8 million visitors, according to the report. August was the busiest month for the downtown area with 934,000 visits. According to the data portrait of the city, 35 percent of all visits took place on Fridays and Saturdays, and 29 percent of visits took place from noon – 2 p.m. and in the 6 – 8 p.m. time frame.

Overall, according to the report, annual visit counts showed slight growth in 2024 when compared with the two prior years.

In terms of the origins of visitors, 16 percent last year came from the 48009 zip code for Birmingham, while 15.5 percent of visitors came from Blomfield Hills and Bloomfield Township zip codes of 48301, 48302 and 48304. Residents of Franklin (48025) accounted for 5.1 percent of visits last year and Royal Oak (48073) visitors accounted for 2.7 percent. All other zip codes accounted for 60.5 percent of all visits in 2024.

The report also noted that Birmingham visitors were “slightly less ethnically and racially diverse” when considering the makeup of visitors, with 76.5 percent White visitors and 9 percent Black visitors to the downtown area.

The data analytics firm also said that 68 percent of visitors were likely to have a bachelor degree as opposed to the Oakland County profile of 51 percent degree holders.

In terms of time spent by visitors once in the downtown area, 24 percent of visits lasted 10-30 minutes; 54 percent stayed one hour or longer; and 18 percent stayed longer than 2.5 hours.

The Placer, ai firm also developed psychographics for those visiting downtown Birmingham last year.

Visitors to the downtown area in 2024, according to the firm, had higher median incomes of $129,200, against a county median income of $92,000.

The firm also posited that 61 percent of visitors were considered ‘Power Elite” from the most exclusive neighborhoods, while 19 percent of visitors were classified as “Booming With Confidence” which consists of prosperous established couples in the peak earning years who are living in suburban homes.