By Gary Nager
A New Tampa & Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News Exclusive! The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce and New Tampa Chamber of Commerce are set to join forces to better serve the business community in our area.
On Friday, July 25, as we were going to press with this issue, we received the following email from Hope Allen, the executive director of the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC):
“Board members of the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce and the President of the New Tampa Chamber of Commerce met recently to discuss the idea of merging the two Chambers to better serve the business community of the Wesley Chapel and New Tampa areas.
The Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors has appointed a task force to explore the logistics and benefit of “joining forces” and conducting a due-diligence review.
“While discussions are still in their infancy, we are always interested in reviewing partnerships that enhance our business community” says Allen. “After the task force completes its review, the next step is to engage a broader pool of people in the discussion, including current Chamber members and community leaders.”
New Tampa Chamber president Neil Heird says, “As the New Tampa/Wesley Chapel area continues its growth and economic expansion, I began wondering how we might expand to offer the type of support our business community needs. With so many smaller Chambers in and around the North Tampa area, all working independently of one another, I just didn’t see the true value in that approach, especially given the proximity of New Tampa to Wesley Chapel. In general, I believe that our areas have several aspects of overlap, so I reached out to Hope Allen to explore the possibility of merging our two Chambers. I think we both can be stronger together than we are separately — and we both realized our business communities have a lot in common — so it only made sense to consider joining together. We are excited about the potential a merger like this might offer and I look forward to continuing the process.”
“We believe this is a potential opportunity to build a strong organization, focused on membership development, community development and economic development in the New Tampa/Wesley Chapel area,” Allen says. “We are completing all of the due-diligence review to ensure this would benefit both organizations and our members.”
A decision about finalizing the merger is expected to be made by October.”
Editor’s note — There is a lot of good news to be gleaned from this important piece of correspondence.
There is no doubt that the WCCC has taken the lead — even in New Tampa — in terms of the number of events (especially ribbon cuttings and other free events) and in the work it does to not only help provide service to its 500+ member businesses, but Allen, WCCC president Jeff Novotny and other Board members work with and provide a resource for local governmental officials who are trying to attract additional major businesses to the Wesley Chapel area.
By joining forces and/or “absorbing” the New Tampa Chamber, we can now expect more of a push for more new members, more Wesley Chapel Chamber Ambassadors visiting businesses south of the Pasco line and more WCCC ribbon cuttings in New Tampa, as well as (perhaps) some assistance for Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (photo), who works tirelessly to attract large-scale employers to the City of Tampa (especially white collar jobs) to bring them to the city’s most remote (in terms of geography) corner, New Tampa.
Allen says that among the additional items to be discussed in the future are what, if anything, will be done to revive the annual (until this year) Taste of New Tampa, if there will be any change of a name change or alteration to reflect the addition of New Tampa under the WCCC umbrella and perhaps the addition of some New Tampa-based liaisons to the WCCC Board.
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