A look back at Chamber’s birth
To the editor:
As founder and first president of the current Chamber of Commerce it is hard to realize that it has been 20 years. In 1989 the old Cape Chamber merged, or rather submerged with the Chamber of Southwest Florida. I wrote letters to the press decrying this as losing the COC the city loses its identity, we merely become a lump of Lee in the CSWF with little or no PR for the Cape. After this sub-merger, I began asking business people if there was any interest informing a new COC or equivalent organ to market the Cape specifically.
I received much resistance as many business people didn’t see a COC as a business tool. My friend, Jim Conway, head of the old Chamber, asked me not to do it. But, after a few months I had rounded up a coterie of progressive business people as a nucleus of a COC and I called a press conference to announce the birth of a bouncing baby Chamber.
After the item aired on the TV news I received a call from Bill Smith, the appliance king, who wanted to join. He was our first member at the introductory rate of $100.
Being in politics, I was somewhat controversial and announced that I would resign after we had 100 members so they could elect a business man to get the new COC off and running. A local attorney was elected and soon announced that he was a candidate for mayor. I wrote some excoriating letters decrying him as a shameless opportunist using the COC as a launching pad for his political ambition. Shortly thereafter he withdrew as candidate and the COC went underground.
Having retired from advertising my idea was to make this COC a vehicle to sell the Cape to the world or at least Fort Myers. I wanted a restaurant division to sell the Cape as a dining destination, public events like the Christmas tree lighting, membership events like golf tourneys, dinner dances, a promo to make August “sell the Cape month” cooperating advertising for other ideas, etc. But without a strong PR influence, the COC seemed ashamed to have its name in the paper.
Thus, in my less than humble opinion, the COC has never lived up to its real potential. A recent news article stated that it wanted members as it has less than 900 member out of a potential 8,000 businesses on the Cape. But only an active PR effort to prove itself can attract businesses. Make it the 21st Century Cape COC a shining light of shameless PR exploitation and membership will be valuable rather than a perfunctory debating society.. Perhaps my antagonism to its lack of potential exploitation may explain why I was never contacted about the anniversary when I am one of the few still living who witnessed its birth first hand, and mourned its lack of vigor and direction.
Peter Stewart Hare