Latest news with #GreaterPortageChamberofCommerce
Chicago Tribune
07-04-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
‘We're promoting the chamber members': Portage chamber's new leader focused on growth, service
Jerry Czarnecki, new executive director of the Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce, is focused on growing membership by improving services to the business community. 'We're a business whose business is to run businesses, then help businesses run,' he said. 'We're basically on your payroll,' he said, as an advocate for the business community. That includes promoting businesses on social media by sharing members' posts about events and news about their business. 'We're not promoting the chamber, we're promoting the chamber members,' he said. The chamber has about 280 members, with membership fees as low as $350 per year. Czarnecki and his team are looking for ways to serve the community better and to connect residents to services. That includes working with the city's utilities department to offer a QR code that links to a member directory to show where various services are available. That's a service that helps new utilities customers get better acquainted with the community. Last year, the chamber launched a magazine for Portage. Former executive director Nancy Simpson's primary focus now is the magazine. Bringing in Czarnecki eases pressures on Simpson. 'You can't put everything on a plate before more stuff starts falling off,' he said. Increasing the staff allows the chamber to do more. He hopes to add staff as membership continues to grow. 'We've definitely not saturated the community,' he said. At every monthly board meeting, members are expected to provide names of potential business leaders to contact about membership. It's a lukewarm introduction, Czarnecki said, but it's better than a cold call. The chamber's public policy committee has had success recently, persuading the City Council to adopt changes in licensing for contractors and other requirements. That work in advising the city on potential policy changes, begun last year when Simpson was executive director, will continue, Czarnecki said. 'We really want to be a part of what's happening there.' The chamber is also working with Portage Township Schools to expand the school district's No Place for Hate initiative. The chamber will roll out that program to member businesses first, then go beyond it to other businesses as well. The aim is to let students know that local displays displaying the No Place for Hate sign support the students in fighting bigotry and bullying. A chamber event each September helps build awareness of the community. A progressive dinner involves transporting 60 to 80 people via limo buses to multiple restaurants for a sampling of their offerings. 'We really need to highlight the community,' Czarnecki said. Czarnecki's past careers have had an impact on his current job. As a teacher and later as executive director of a homeless shelter, his job has always been about serving people and helping them make the connections they need for a brighter future. Small wins matter. 'Success is the most addictive drug in the world,' he said. 'I think there's a lot of potential here' in terms of economic development, he said.
Chicago Tribune
20-02-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Portage Mayor Austin Bonta: City seeing signs of business growth, success
Portage Mayor Austin Bonta isn't following the 'what have you done for me lately' mantra, he said in his State of the City address Thursday. 'I'm in the 'what have you done for my child's future' business,' he said. 'How are we setting up our city now so that our children who are growing up here now want to stay or want to come back or feel comfortable coming back,' he said at the Woodland Park luncheon hosted by the Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce. The city is seeing business growth, signs that what his administration has been doing in the past year is starting to pay off, he said. 'We will be a city that grows. It will not be a city that grows stagnant or smaller,' Bonta said. Before 2003, and to some extent afterward, residents were talking about a lot of empty storefronts in the city. 'In the last year, we saw a lot of those storefronts being filled,' he said. Among them is Hot Body Pilates, which he said is drawing people to Portage so they don't have to go as far as Merrillville to do those exercises. 'People like the convenience of being able to shop local,' which slows traffic because residents aren't racing to get out of town to hit the stores, restaurants and other businesses they want to patronize, Bonta said. 'What we are starting to see is that success breeds success,' he said. Bonta talked about the owner of On the Roxx, an entertainment venue in the Portage Mall, reviewing plans for the downtown the city is developing north of Central Avenue between Hamstrom and Willowcreek roads. 'Where's our building?' the business owner asked. 'Somehow, the artist just keeps forgetting it's there,' Bonta said, or perhaps anticipates those Portage Mall buildings being razed. 'We don't operate like that,' he said. Instead, the city has been meeting with Portage Mall property owners to develop a plan to pave the parking lot that 'kind of looks like the surface of the moon sometimes' with all its craters, he said. 'We're starting to see that life, that dove with an olive branch coming into that mall,' Bonta said in reference to the Noah's Ark story in which the dove was dispatched to see if the flooding was easing. Now the mall is a big part of plans for the downtown being created, he said. The mall isn't the only area where economic rebirth is happening, Bonta said. 'We have had so many developers come to our city in the last year' who had given up on the city because it was too hard to get projects done five or 10 years ago, he said. Bonta told of being 17 or 18 years old and heading to college, not expecting to be able to return to Portage for a successful career. He hopes teens will find it easier to return to Portage in the future and find that success. A strong partnership with Portage Township Schools is helping make that happen. School Superintendent Amanda Alaniz was Bonta's first principal when he was a first-year teacher, he said. 'Amanda had a lot of great ideas from the start,' he said, including setting up a human resources department and a robust information technology push, when he met with her after his election in 2023. Wilma Velazquez, vice president of the School Board and a member of the city's Redevelopment Commission, has also been helpful, he said. The school district had an agreement to pay the salaries of school resource officers, employees of the city's police department, but hadn't been paying them because the city hadn't been sending bills for them. That's now resolved. The RDC also had $100,000 budgeted for education grants each year, but that money hadn't been spent because no application system was in place. This year, for the first time, that application system will be in place, Bonta said. The city also partnered with the school district in the creation of the city's 20th park, Miami Park, at the intersection of Lute and Airport roads. The city is leasing the land from the school district. Assistant Park Superintendent John Harrison found grant money for a fitness area that could only be used at a new park, so the city made it happen, Bonta said. At the other 19 parks, deferred maintenance has long been an issue with only five people assigned to maintain them. Even the sidewalk in front of the maintenance facility had weeds, a sure sign of trouble, Bonta said. He also saw playground equipment that had been broken for as long as he could remember. 'What we needed was to get our parks in physical shape,' so the city expects to hire two additional people for the maintenance staff, Bonta said. The farmers market was another area where his staff offered advice for improvement. Planning and Development Director Tom Cherry and Chief of Staff Lee Ann Van Curen spotted an issue right away: 'It's a farmers market, but there are no farmers there.' The event draws a large crowd each time it's held. 'There's an excitement there; there's an energy there,' Bonta said. 'People now have a memory that they want to return.' As that energy builds in Portage, former residents are taking notice and moving back. 'We are building a community where people who want to move here, they make it their hometown,' he said.
