Growth is our Strategy Forward

Last week, I gave you a heads-up about the upcoming Board vote: a proposal to create a joint venture, a new chamber organization, built to honor the priorities of our capital city while harnessing our strength for the full-throated regional advocacy and business development we need to compete. If you saw this past weekend’s Pioneer Press article, St. Paul, Minneapolis chambers of commerce weigh uniting operations, and the subsequent Star Tribune article, After a year of upheaval, Minnesota business organizations regroup to address economic slide, you already know the headlines. I want to give you the substance behind them. 
 
The timing wasn’t planned, but it couldn’t be more on point - Mayor Her’s budget address last week said it plainly: 

• “Our best strategy is economic growth. We must create the conditions for new residents, industry, entrepreneurs, development.” Your Chamber agrees.
• Her goal is “a city with stronger finances, well maintained assets, and a structure prepared for the future.” That’s the frame we’re using too.  
• Ultimately, the city “can’t cut our way to long term sustainability.” Neither can your Chamber. 

 
A unified regional chamber model has been contemplated multiple times in years past. So we have history pushing us to get this right.  Over the past 18 months your Board – a genuinely thoughtful, thorough group carrying on a long legacy of strong chamber leadership – has done a deep dive into what this would mean for our individual chambers and our region as a whole. We surveyed you, our membership, and you overwhelmingly expressed support for this venture. I’ve personally spent significant time with chamber leaders around the country who already have made this transition, learning what worked, what didn’t, and folding that into our plan. The numbers back up the direction: 59% of chambers nationwide are exploring – or have completed – this very thing.
 
Look at the map, and the pattern is even clearer. Of the top 20 metro areas in the country, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region (#16) is one of only a handful that hasn’t organized its chamber voice regionally. And other “split” regions, including Kansas City, Albany-Schenectady NY, and Norfolk-Virgina Beach, VA have found ways to move forward together without losing their local identities. Being the “Twin Cities” doesn’t exempt us from needing one, coordinated, competitive voice on key issues. Greater MSP was built 15 years ago on that same premise. Today, a unified regional chamber is the next step in delivering it – again, providing we can maintain our connection to the ground as well.
 
And one comment on the animated discussions underway this month: embrace them! Minnesota Nice aside, disagreement is a sign of strength - not a warning sign. I appreciate – genuinely – the depth and range of perspectives coming from members, current and former leaders, all who care deeply about Saint Paul’s future. Many of them are the same people who shepherded us to this moment of opportunity. That honest, sometimes uncomfortable exchange is exactly what has kept our city, this Chamber, resilient for generations. It’s not a red flag. It’s how we get this right.

My ask is that we continue to stand together. Please reach out to me directly with your questions and suggestions – to ensure your voice continues to be heard. I look forward to continued service to you, to our capital city of Saint Paul, and to our prosperous future.
 
See you in the trenches, 
 
B

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