February 24, 2005

Downtown merchants question effectiveness, role of C of C

By Lauren Heaton

Two weeks ago a group of downtown merchants took action to support their own commercial interests by calling for big change in the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Thirty-six downtown business owners signed a petition, which circulated the week of Feb. 7, demanding that the Chamber redouble its efforts and take a proactive role in promoting local business.

“The small businesses and especially retail shops are suffering in Yellow Springs. It is unclear what the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce is prepared to do in the near future. We must insist that the [Chamber] outline a course of action to benefit all businesses in town,” states the petition, which, according to Mary Alice Wilson, the owner of Dark Star Books, she and Don Beard circulated.

Referring to Betsy Newman, the director of the Chamber, the petition says, “We have no confidence that the current director has any interest in meeting our needs.”

Twenty-five members of the Chamber attended a regular meeting held at the Antioch Inn on Feb. 10, where, for the first time in many years, according to Don Hollister the Chamber’s interim president, business owners came together to air their concerns about how the Chamber should help businesses that are struggling in a slow economy.

Some who signed the petition, such as Beard, who owns Moody Shoes, which is going out of business, as well as Peach’s Grill and the Import House, said that the Chamber has not done enough to promote businesses or to unify and grow the Chamber’s membership.

“You have to be a dynamic leader to be the director of a chamber of commerce, and it’s not leadership if you’re not being proactive and you’re leaning too much on the business owners to do this,” Beard said. “It’s crunch time, and if we don’t get some change, we’re going to start seeing some empty storefronts.”

Priscilla Moore, who owns Mr. Fub’s Party, and Wilson said that for the past 15 years the Chamber has not represented their interests. The Chamber’s director should regularly visit retailers to gain a sense of the business climate and merchants’ needs, they said. They would also like the director to take an active role in drawing Yellow Springers and people from out of town into their stores to shop.

Newman said that she is doing the best she can given the resources she has to meet the demands of her job as a visitor’s center and a Chamber of Commerce for Yellow Springs.

“If you look at the budget and get me some clerical help, I’d love to get out and visit businesses, there’s nothing I’d like better,” she said.

Newman said the time she spends answering phone calls and questions from visitors dropping by the Chamber office in the Train Station consumes at least half of her time at work. The Chamber also spends at least four months each year organizing the biannual Street Fairs, she said.

The Chamber’s annual budget of about $60,000 is largely made from Street Fair income and membership dues and receives no subsidies from the Village government. The Chamber pays the director’s full-time salary of $23,000, employs weekend staff and receives the support of a dozen regular volunteers who provide administrative aid.

Though Newman did not want to comment on the petition itself, both she and Hollister said that the problem with the Chamber lies not in Newman’s performance, but in the lack of organizational clarity at the Chamber of Commerce.

“I don’t want to dismiss any of the complaints and grumblings, but the problem is we have different conceptions of what the focus of the Chamber should be,” Hollister said.

Should the Chamber focus on its 124 small business members (who include the News) or the 12 companies that have over 50 employees each that also belong to the organization? Should the Chamber focus on group advertising or promotional brochures, attracting local shoppers or visitors, supporting individual business needs or improving the overall business climate?

The Chamber’s mission is to improve business conditions by promoting local enterprises, but beyond that, its bylaws do not contain a job description or performance review schedule for the director, Hollister said. And there has never been a push within the organization to change the status quo, he said.

Status quo is exactly what Beard objects to. He said that it is the Chamber’s job, without being prompted, to help businesses that are struggling financially and to proactively and creatively devise fresh ways to promote Yellow Springs.

Other Chamber members at the meeting focused more on the disunity of the membership and lack of participation from business owners in promoting Yellow Springs.

“People who want things done have to be willing to put some skin in the game, come to meetings and do some work,” said Carol Gasho, a former president of the Chamber who is the plant manager at The Antioch Company.

Yellow Springs should be an easy place to sell because it has a “living downtown, a commodity that’s almost vanished from small towns,” said Mike Koveleski, the owner of Design Sleep. But the unity, organization and leadership to accomplish the task is missing, he said.

Hollister said that in his perspective the Chamber has the difficult job of balancing promoting downtown businesses and not crowding Yellow Springs with a sometimes unwanted throng of weekend and fair-weather visitors.

The Chamber has budgeted $11,000 toward an effort by the Yellow Springs Men’s Group to promote the positive attributes of the village, but Hollister questions whether the community wants the things that a successful project like that might bring.

The Chamber’s executive committee, which is made up of the officers of the Chamber board, decided last month to pursue a strategic plan for the organization, which will allow its members to evaluate the Chamber. The committee also scheduled an evaluation of the director’s job description for the spring. The Chamber is cosponsoring both the second economic forum, with the Men’s Group, on March 26, and the “Smart Growth” weekend in April.

“Part of the job of the executive committee is to listen, and I hope that the coming months show that this executive committee does respond,” Hollister said. “There’s stuff in the air. It’s kind of an exciting time with a lot of possibilities, and the Chamber will be part of that.”