Time to Put a Fork in New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce?

The recent news that the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce had cancelled this year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade may have been the death knell for a once proud organization which has been working to advance the concerns of the New Rochelle business community and the economic vitality of the city since 1922. The organization, in steady decline for the past several years, has seen its decay accelerate since the creation of the New Rochelle Business Improvement District in 2000 and the implementation of a half-baked development plan that relied heavily on outside real estate investment and “big box” retailers with no stake in the local community.

A review of the Chamber’s “About Us” Page reveals just how far the organization has fallen:

• A Haunted House Committee which meets annually to design, construct and perform in New Rochelle’s Famous Haunted House. DISCONTINUED
• A Thanksgiving Parade Committee which meets annually to design, construct floats and to stage Westchester’s only Thanksgiving Parade.PARADE CANCELLED
• An Arbitration Committee which negotiates customer-firm disputes when an agreeable settlement cannot be reached between the two parties.
• An Events Committee which meets to produce networking opportunities for business professionals such as our Table Top Exp, Open Mic Nights and Networking Roundtables.INACTIVE
• A Recognition Dinner Dance Committee which meets to discuss and formulate a program which traditionally pays tribute to a special segment of the community.
• An Education/Scholarship Committee which meets to raise funds and to evaluate candidates’ applications for scholarships. Chamber works with local High Schools to produce our Scholarship Awards Dinner.
• A Finance Committee which meets annually, or when necessary, to formulate the Chamber’s budget.
• A Women of Excellence Awards Dinner which meets to depict professional women in the community nominated by the community.
• A Nominating Committee which selects the nominees to serve on the Board of Directors.
• A Program Committee which meets to screen and discuss advertising and promotional activities designed to stimulate the business community.
• A Traffic and Parking Committee which meets to discuss traffic flow and related matters.
• A Secretaries’ Day Planning Committee which is composed to formulate an annual luncheon and to establish the recipients of the secretaries’ fund raising programs.
• A Speakers Event Committee which contributes information on the functions of the Chamber of Commerce, the services of its members and discussion on prevailing and future plans of the City of New Rochelle.

In April of this year the Chamber discontinued the position of Executive Director of the Chamber, firing Denise Lally, the only person actively working on the various initiatives described above almost all of which have been dormant ever since. The Chamber closed down its storefront location on Main Street, moved its remaining office space to an out of the way location above street level where the telephone is rarely answered. The Chamber has not organized a ribbon-cutting ceremony in years. Recent store opening for Party City, Ashley Furniture and Tasti D-Lite went unheralded by the Chamber.

The home page of the organization’s web site (pictured above) is a testament to the apathy which has come to define the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce where events like the discontinued Haunted house and cancelled Thanksgiving parade are still featured prominently.

What does it say about New Rochelle that the single biggest initiative of the Chamber of Commerce in 2009 has been to push for a law requiring landlords to cover empty storefronts with artwork? Maybe they should be pushing for zoning regulations that would discourage landlords from renting to storefront churches, effectively barring new investment for restaurants in downtown New Rochelle? Or maybe they should just admit defeat and throw in the towel.

Whatever they decide let there be no doubt that the decline of long-standing private sector initiatives like the Chamber of Commerce is a direct consequence of so-called public-private partnership development which are really more like private development for an elite few business people using public funds provided by an elite few government officials.