The Chamber Working through growing pains

One of the overriding themes of 2017 in Chestermere was been change, change at city hall, change in the community as it grew and change at the chamber of commerce.
Chamber of Commerce President Frank Lavallée said that that theme of change started right at the beginning of 2017.
The year started off on a bit of a bumpy road for the Chamber after the then President resigned in January.
With the vacancy at the top, Lavallée was nominated for the job. He decided to step up and take on the role.
“It was a big learning curve on my end,” he said.
Lavallée had to be a quick study as the chamber held its AGM at the end of February last year and planned out the years events and activities then.
“Not all of them succeeded,” admitted Lavallée.
The biggest disappointment came from having to cancel the annual golf tournament.
Lavallée believes that a major factor in the failure of the golf tournament was tournament fatigue amongst residents.
“The golf tournament, I think ended up just not timing out nicely with all the other golf tournaments that are out there,” he said.
They learned, and were able to successfully apply this learning to the business awards, that the scheduling of events is key in Chestermere.
“If you’re the last golf tournament at the end of the year you’re not going to get as many as if you’re the first golf tournament of the season,” he said.
While they have to wait until the coming AGM to be certain of their 2018 activities, Lavallée said that it is likely that the golf tournament will be back in 2018 but it will depend on what they hear from the community.
Where the golf tournament was a disappointment, both the Christmas party and business awards were rousing successes for the Chamber.
“Our Christmas party was fantastic,” he said.
The party grew by about 25 people from last year.
Lavallée felt that both events are growing and moving in the right direction with the Chamber.
In 2017, they have welcomed about seven new businesses as members to the chamber and have received interest from an additional 10 businesses.
“Right now, I think we’re still working on building the Chamber so we can help more of the businesses out in the city,” said Lavallée.
The biggest achievement of the year though has been the business survey they are conducting in partnership with the city.
The survey will be the key to the Chamber’s plans for 2018.
As they look to continue to grow and serve the local business community Lavallée said they are looking for direction from the community by way of the survey.
So far, they have had a great response from local businesses and the chamber is looking forward to getting the results early in the new year.
“I foresee 2018 being a really good year for the Chamber…from the steps that we did take this year,” he said.