Cary Chamber Of Commerce

Mission:

The Cary Chamber of Commerce serves as the unified business voice of the Cary area. It provides leadership to support and facilitate a thriving business environment. The Chamber believes that such an environment is characterized by the strength and growth of resident businesses, by the quality and stability of their workforces and by the attractiveness of our market to businesses whose presence would be a positive influence on our community.

Chamber History:

Cary's original Chamber was formed in the 1920s but was unable to survive during the Great Depression. In 1962, a new Chamber was formed and it opened with less than a dozen members and Thomas S. Secrest, Sr. as the first president.
The Chamber's first major project began that same decade. Jordan Hall, Cary's first community center, was built on two acres of land donated by one of the Chamber's first members, G. H. (Buck) Jordan, Jr., who also built the facility at cost. Chamber members paid for the construction, operation, and maintenance. Jordan Hall was an immediate benefit to the community, but began to take a toll on the Chamber's finances. Resources were soon depleted. Luckily, the Chamber was supported strongly by the Town who agreed to purchase it from the Chamber in1975.

That transaction put the Chamber back on positive footing and for the first time hired a full time executive director. The Cary Chamber promoted the town as the perfect location and marketed it as being "at the hub of the Triangle." One of the first slogans, "Where Better Living Begins," was used to target young families with a message promoting Cary as a great place in which to raise a family and the ideal location to reach all the other good things in the Triangle.

The Chambers beginning was met with challenges. Oftentimes when the Chamber tried to bring in certain types of business or industry into town, members of the Town Council had mixed feelings. According to the Chamber's 1976 president, G. Richard Ladd, the Chamber and Council were not always on the same page. In an effort to ratify the relationship and end disagreement, the Chamber appointed a committee to draft a statement on economic development that both town officials and business leaders could support. Chaired by Russell Buxton, III, the committee and the statement it drafted became the basis for the Cary Economic Policy.

The Cary Chamber was the catalyst in getting the first Economic Policy adopted. After the adoption, the Town Council moved quickly to make more land available for industry. The zoning ordinance was amended to include industrial performance districts (IPDs), now called planned unit developments (PUDs), in which developers had great flexibility in locating plants as long as they followed rigid rules for setbacks and buffers. Industry had been confined previously to a corridor along the railroads. The "clincher" in attracting industry proved to be Cary's livability. Buxton said prospects wanted to see the whole town first, often waiting until their second or third visits to look at specific sites.

The Council also agreed to provide the Chamber of Commerce with financial help if it would be the town's official industry recruiter. The first assistance, given in December 1977, was $1,500 to pay for a promotional brochure. By 1982, the town was allocating $50,000 annually to help the Chamber and by the 1990s $75,000 had been allocated towards the efforts.

Cary and the Chamber rolled the industrial welcome mat out just in time for the booming 1980s. Locating here during the decade were over 40 manufacturing, research, or service industries that went on to employ thousands of residents. Some of the largest of those who have moved to Cary in the last 40 years include SAS Institute, American Airlines Reservation Center, IBM, WakeMed Cary Hospital, Oxford University Press, John Deere, Cotton Incorporated, Siemens, Caterpillar, and MCI WorldCom - Most recently Infineon, R.H. Donnelley and Qualcomm.

Also built during the 1980s were 17 new shopping centers and a multitude of other commercial enterprises. The 1990s brought more of the same. As a result, the ratio of residential to non-residential property dropped to about 70:30 by the end of the decade. The tax rate also dropped. It averaged 77 cents per $100 during the 1977 - 1984 valuation cycle, 64 cents during the 1985 - 1992 cycle, and 54 cents through the end of the 1990s and today.

The Cary Economic Policy was a major turning point for the Chamber of Commerce as well as for the town. Once it became the town's economic development office, the Chamber launched a professional industrial recruitment drive and increased support services for those businesses already here. Then, as the business community grew, so did the Chamber's membership, treasury, facilities, programs, and influence. Membership rose from 400 to 1,200 between 1986 and 1994, the first eight years of Howard Johnson's tenure as president.
Housed for 12 years in the old centennial headquarters building, the Chamber purchased the original Town Hall site at 114 West Chatham Street and erected its own building in 1983. Within 10 years that building was too small. The Chamber erected a new $1 million facility across Academy Street from the Town Hall Campus in 1993 and now employs a staff of seven.