Members of the Rollingwood Community Development Corp. are in the midst of refocusing their efforts to spur economic development in the city.

Rollingwood City Administrator Charles Winfield said the corporation—which began collecting a portion of the city’s sales taxes in 2002—was originally created to help offset city costs for projects such as park and street improvements with funds collected from sales tax revenue.

The RCDC uses a quarter of a percent of all city sales tax revenue it collects to pay for projects, such as the creation of the parking lot next to City Hall, the recent repaving of Edgegrove Drive and Rollingwood Park’s field house. However, RCDC members say they want to start focusing their efforts and money on economic development.

“What the city needs as a whole is sales tax-generating businesses in Rollingwood,” Joe Basham, chairman of the RCDC and a City Council member, said July 22.

He said the idea of creating a master plan for the commercial corridors within the city first came to him after hearing the Rollingwood Park Commission was putting together its own master plan, inventorying items in the park and looking at future improvements.

Basham said the first step for RCDC is to create a database of all businesses within Rollingwood—with addresses, points of contact and phone numbers.

“We need to know what’s out there,” he said.

The RCDC board of directors voted to move forward with creating a database of current businesses.

Basham said he would like to use that database to help promote existing local businesses and any events the businesses may hold in the future, and the board agreed to create a Facebook page as means of promoting local businesses.