A Christmas Gift to Our Community

It's official now. The U.S. Navy will build 10 littoral combat ships at Marinette Marine in partnership with Lockheed Martin.

It's been a long time coming. Officials from Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine met with the chamber's board of directors in August 2009. At that time, everyone believed a decision in the then-winner-take-all contract could come as early as July of August 2010.

But these matters rarely happen without setbacks and obstacles and the contract was no exception. The purchase proposal changed to a split between our local shipyard and one in Mobile, Ala., with 10 ships built at each yard. And now it's reality: Good news indeed after a protracted recession that economists insist ended in June 2009.

The contract will create jobs at Marinette Marine and allow company officials to bring laid off workers back to the job. Some of this will happen in early 2011, the rest will occur over a period of years. In addition to new jobs at the shipyard, it is expected that 4,000 to 5,000 jobs will be created in supporting industries across Northeast Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

This is reason to rejoice during this season of good cheer and gratitude. Our community - like the rest of the country - has experienced unemployment. At one point, the percentage was high: Between 13 and 14 percent on both sides of the river.

In the fall of 2009, the chamber pulled a small group of economic development people together for lunch. The group made the decision to target lawmakers to get the job done in Washington. Those lawmakers - from both Michigan and Wisconsin - came through for our community and our region with fling colors.

We are grateful for their support.

Many of these same lawmakers are leaving office this month. But they will do so on a high note.

And so we will celebrate the winter holidays on a note of optimism and gratitude.

And when the lighted tree is once again hoisted on the shipyard crane - a long-standing tradition - we will know it's Christmas for certain.

A Reason to Rejoice

Thanks to a generous community and an outstanding committee, the annual Holiday Charity Ball, a project of the chamber foundation, raised about $20,000 for the Twin Counties Free Clinic.

That was our goal: To bring our total gift back up to 2007 and 2008 levels after a challenging 2009.

Thanks to you, we were successful.

We have much to be thankful for in the runup to 2011. The past few years have created challenge for our local, regional, national and global economies. But in challenges lie small triumphs and we have seen our share.

Our community remains compassionate. We saw that recently as community members rallied around the family of a troubled young man who took his own life. It is easy to take pride in how community members provided support in the wake of a tragedy.

We are proud, too, of Marinette Marine and its employees who recently launched another littoral combat ship for Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy. We are thankful to the lawmakers who have shepharded a bill for more LCS vessels through Congress and hope their Senate colleagues will join them in a desire to create more jobs for our region, and especially the Marinette Menominee area.

Find a reason to rejoice this season, as we have many.

And thanks for helping us help the Twin Counties Free Clinic.

A Night to Shine

We're expecting more than 160 people to attend Friday night's Holiday Charity Ball at Schussler's in Peshtigo.

And why not? It's a chance to dress up, to have fun and dance, and to raise money for the Twin Counties Free Clinic.

The clinic serves uninsured and underinsured residents of both Marinette and Menominee counties. Since 2002, the chamber foundation, our charitable arm, has organized the charity ball to support the clinic. The committee, chaired this year by Diane Becker of Stephenson National Bank & Trust and Barb Van De Hei of Bay Cities Radio, began working together in August. Holly Meyer is the chamber staff liaison to the event, and she works closely with Candy Sheridan, the clinic director.

Everyone on the committee works hard to solicit donations that keep operational costs down so more money can find its way to the free clinic. Committee members seek silent and live auction items, sell raffle tickets, solicit cash donations for the clinic, and perform a myriad os other tasks large and small.

This year for the first time, the event has a them - other than holiday giving - that offers up a few surprises. As usual, auctioneer Nellie Beland of Superior Auction & Appraisal, has some fun up her sleeve.

Board member (and local attorney) Arthur Baron will be master of ceremonies, doing his best to imitate Dean Martin (he does a great job). A few other "stars" will also make appearances. (Did I mention the decorations are truly stellar?)

Holly and her team have this event choreographed down to the smallest detail. Chamber staffers Donna Zeratsky and Sandi Brumbaugh will be there to greet you and Joe Plautz will be our guy who gets things done.

It's going to be a fun evening. And better still, it's going to raise money for a good cause. Cash donations are already about twice the level as last year.

We live in a generous community.

Time to Pull Together

By its very definition, a chamber of commerce is a group of people working together.

We form committees to do just that. The committees are made up of chamber members, and representatives from the community. Our committees perform many tasks and tackle many challenges, from organizing programs like Mini Business World and Career Opportunities Expo to developing relocation materials for area companies to use when they recruit workers or Shop Local efforts to encourage area residents to support local businesses.

We actively seek partnerships with other organizations. We work closely with UW-Marinette, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Marinette County, and many other organizations. Recently, we've begun to build stronger partnerships with the M&M Area Community Foundation.

In other words, we collaborate. We pull together to harness the power of people working together.

Our community has just experienced a tragedy in one of its schools. It is time to pull together in a bigger way so that the healing can begin and we can prevent such tragedies in years to come.

It is too early to predict how we will work together in the future. Community needs gave birth to the Healthy Youth Coalition a decade ago and the DAR Boys Club (now the Boys and Girls Club) nearly a century ago. But we will work together and we will pull our community through the heartbreak of a young life lost and other lives endangered.

If you are called to serve in any way, please do so. What side of the river you live on is not important. The future of our community - and our young people - belongs to all of us.

Shop Local First

As Thanksgiving Day winds down, many of us are gearing up for Black Friday, the biggest and busiest shopping day of the year. Retailers dubbed it "black" because it's the day that puts them in the black for the fiscal year.

In reality, it all starts the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when the EagleHerald lands on our doorstep with an especially audible thump, chock full of fliers from every big store in town, from hardware stores and drug stores to big-box retailers. It's a good thing we've got a holiday on Thursday because it takes two days to pore over all the shopping circulars.

Rest up and eat well on Thankgiving because you'll need to sustain yourself on Friday. Go to bed early too, because some stores open in the wee hours of the morning, or earlier. One chamber staffer vows to be up and shopping at 4 a.m.

Think of this when you shop: Every time you spend $100 at a locally owned store, $68 stays in the community. When you shop at a local chain store, nearly $50 stays in the community. It's a good deal for everyone.

We're not telling you not to drive to Green Bay or Escanaba to shop. Those cities are part of our region, and some of our neighbors commute to jobs in those cities. But shop locally first; if you can't find it locally, then make that road trip.

On the other hand, as one of our members asked recently, "If you can't find it locally, do you really need it?"

Happy shopping.

Good-bye to an Old Friend

It's sad to see any business close, but the Globe is near and dear to the chamber's heart. So the closing of this venerable furniture store in downtown Marinette leaves a bittersweet feeling.

Tobias Kirmse founded the Globe in 1888. His son, Walter, was one of the founders of the former Marinette Area Chamber of Commerce in 1939. The Marinette chamber is one of our two ancester organiations, along with the Menominee/River Cities Chamber of Commerce.

Two of Walter descendents, John Plouff and Mary Plouff McCarrier, served as chamber presidents in 1968-69 and 1997-98 respectively.

Times have changed in the last 122 years. But through that time, the Globe has remained a retail destination for people who sought high-quality furniture for their homes. It has remained an anchor for downtown Marinette, even when our retail center gradually shifted to the south side of town.

We will miss this established family business, but we are pleased for Mary McCarrier and her family who will now have time to pursue other interests.

Downtown Marinette will survive, and morph into another kind of business center. We are extremely optimistic! The chamber was contacted recently by several businesses considering downtown locations. We are pleased that some of our members have shown interest recently in downtown's revival and we are exciting about working with them in the new year. We don't have to look far to find inspiration: Downtown Menominee!

Meanwhile, we salute the Globe and we thank the Kirmse-Plouff-McCarrier family for its belief in our community.

Celebrate the End of Road Construction Season

Winter is nearly here.

That means an end to the "other season." You know: Road Construction.

In 2010, road work was everywhere. We coped with dust and detours, barricades and big machinery. We grumbled, we laughed and we counted the days until deer hunting season, because that's when we knew it would finally be over. And it was.

We can now drive down Menominee's 10th Street and Marinette's Hall Avenue. Did we mention Shore Drive, 14th Avenue, Cleveland Avenue, 1st Street and County Trunk T?

It's done. For the time being. And we owe a huge thanks to the crews, from departments of transportation in two states to project overseers to the guys who made it happen by operating heavy machinery, laying sewer pipe and wiring street lights. We offer our kudos as well to the businesses who sweated it out, who called us when they had problems, who made us aware of new challenges.

The chamber raised money on the Menominee side to erect way-finding signs on 13th Street so drivers could locate 10th Street businesses. On the Marinette side, we had a modest amount of money left over from 2004-2005 road work, and we used that to create signage. Sometimes our efforts took longer than we - or businesses that were impacted by detours - would have liked. It wasn't perfect. But we did what we could with a combination of radio ads, signs, newspaper stories and Facebook posts. Chambers are generally wealthy organizations, so we had to make a small amount of money go a long way.

We also offered a low-cost customer relations workshop and created printed tip sheets aimed at helping our members create must-visit destinations that would draw in customers, regardless of road work and barricades.

The businesses who took our advice - and the advice of other members who'd been through major road projects - reported positive results. One of our members made it a point to make friends with the road crews and go our of his way to offer top-notch customer service. He happily reports that his business did well during the 7 1/2 months of road construction.

It's over now. I drove through the new Highway 64/180 roundabout today - easiest thing in the world and a real time-and-gas saver. I cruised down 10th Street - smooth.

Yes, it was a rough year. But the wait was worth it.