Chamber molds Springfield's business climate

In 1980, the chamber was making news with its move to a new location at 320 N. Jefferson, now United Way’s home. Nine years ago, the chamber moved again, to its present home at 202 S. John Q. Hammons Parkway.

Jim Anderson, president of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce since 1987, noted that not everyone was happy with the chamber’s decision to remain in center city.

“We had a lot of pressure to move south. Let’s face it – back in even the late 1980s, people had given up on downtown. I hadn’t,” Anderson said.

That determination has helped the chamber meet the changing needs of local businesses in the last 25 years. That evolution is evident in the way that it works with other entities, said Randell Wallace, attorney with Lathrop & Gage and chairman of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.

Prime examples are Partnership Industrial Center and PIC West, Wallace said.

In 1993, Partnership Industrial Center – a cooperative project of the chamber, its subsidiary, Springfield Business Development Corp, the city of Springfield, Greene County and City Utilities – was born.

The cooperative partners offer incentives by putting in necessary infrastructure so that it’s ready when a tenant decides to come in and build. Costs are recovered once the business is up and running.

In June, 12 years after its inception, the last available piece of land in Partnership Industrial Center sold to Springfield Striping & Sealing.

In 2001, a second industrial center, PIC West, began, and Anderson said that center will soon have four tenants. All told, including the jobs coming down the pipe with recently signed tenants, PIC and PIC West have retained or created 2,100 local jobs, Anderson said.

During the last 25 years, the Chamber has invested time to learn from other communities, through Community Leadership visits and through both foreign and domestic trade missions or business development ventures.

Community Leadership visits, Anderson said, allow local leaders to see firsthand some best-practices in place in comparable U.S. cities. This year a delegation will visit Des Moines, Iowa.

The Ozarks Regional Economic Partnership, a program founded in 1999, was spawned following a Community Leadership visit to Boise, Idaho. A cooperative effort with Associated Electric Cooperative, the program comprises cities, counties and chambers of commerce in a 10-county region.

The chamber is in the midst of Partnership for Prosperity, a five-year capital campaign built on the success of the Ozarks Regional Economic Partnership. Partnership for Prosperity is working toward work-force and income growth, capital investment and development of key industries including health care, higher education and electronics manufacturing.

To date, Anderson said, there are 94 investor businesses that have raised $1.8 million, outpacing the $1.5 million goal. The campaign ends in 2007.

International trade missions that focus on business development have sent city officials abroad to Japan, Mexico and China and domestically to Minneapolis, New York City and Chicago, cities where there’s a corporate office that has a Springfield presence.

“Twenty-five years ago, businesses in Springfield … had a regional scope,” Anderson said. “Today, it’s a global market.”

The chamber also serves as a campaign manager for public policy issues, and has helped to get passed 22 of the 25 ballot issues it has supported since 1989, Anderson said.

The chamber has, in recent years, also taken a more active role in public education, recruiting and endorsing candidates for the Springfield Public Schools Board.

Wallace added, “The chamber is, frankly, asked to take a position on almost every important (local) public policy issue that comes to the voters in our community. We don’t always take a position.”

Everything the chamber sets out to do, Anderson said, is aimed at furthering its mission.

“At the end of the day, what we do is create opportunities for business,” Anderson said.

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