Brownwood News – Last month the City of Brownwood and the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce adopted a new Services Agreement, which will significantly alter the roles of both entities in the areas of conventions, special events, and tourism.

In 2006 the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce entered into an agreement with the City of Brownwood to take on responsibility for the promotion of tourism in Brownwood.  Within the Chamber was created a Convention and Visitors Bureau, which was funded by the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) funds collected by the City.  Under the agreement, the City retained the first $50,000 of HOT funds collected each year, with the balance going to the Chamber.  While that amount varied each year, it was a substantial amount of money.  For the budget years of 2017-18-19, the Chamber collected an average of $300,693 annually from the City.

But fifteen years later, the situation has changed.  Recognizing the need for a mid-sized convention center, the City Council in October 2020 voted to build a multi-purpose event center by remodeling the “Timmins building” on East Baker Street.  The old ice house building on Lee Street behind the Timmins building has been demolished, and in its place will be built a pavilion and stage for outdoor concerts and other outdoor events.  The project is expected to cost approximately $8.9 million, and will largely be paid for with accumulated funds from the Brownwood Municipal Development District.

Building the event center is one thing, operating it is another, thus the need for the City to terminate the convention and visitors agreement with the Chamber and retain all the HOT funds.

To manage the new event center and take over the primary responsibility of promoting tourism, the City assigned new duties to Sports Coordinator Roland Soto, and changed his title to Sports and Events Coordinator.  Also, the Visitor Information Center inside the Chamber, which also has been funded with the HOT funds, will be moving to the Lehnis Railroad Museum.  To ease the transition, the new Services Agreement provides for $45,000 to be paid to the Chamber this year ($30,000 in April and $15,000 in October).  After that the Railroad Museum will bear primary responsibility for the Visitor Information Center.

The City will continue to give the Chamber $5,000 per year for the Highway Banner program.  This is for the banners over the 200 block of East Commerce that advertise various events, such as the Rodeo, the Christmas Festival, etc.  Also the Chamber can apply to the City for $50,000 or more of additional HOT funds to support certain Chamber-sponsored tourism events, subject to City Hall approval.

The new Services Agreement also provides for the Chamber to be able to use the new event center up to three times annually without a rental charge.  This will give the Chamber an opportunity to sponsor and operate revenue-generating events at a low cost.

We visited with Chamber Executive Director Sunni Modawell about the changes and a new direction for the future.  She pointed out that while the Chamber is losing about $300,000 in annual revenue in the new agreement, they also are giving up approximately $100,000 in expenses (mostly salary support and tourism marketing expenses).  So the net revenue loss to the Chamber, while significant, is not quite as bad as it first appears.

She said the Chamber will focus more on helping its members.  “I think we can provide workshops and opportunities for more learning.  We’ll be doing some seminars and webinars.  We will coordinate with businesses to see what needs they have, that we can help to meet.  We are going to have a job fair, which we are already working on, because there are so many businesses that need employees right now.”

Traditionally, one of the roles of chambers of commerce has been to recruit new businesses and industries to town.  That was taken over by the City some years ago with the creation of the Brownwood Economic Development District, now known as the Municipal Development District.  Still, the Chamber helps with that where they can.  Modawell said they would like to continue to work with the City on business recruitment as much as they are able, but the new, tighter budget may limit how much they can do.

“The mission of the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce is to promote a healthy business climate for its Members, by offering opportunities and business knowledge through workshops and seminars,” said Modawell.  “Also we want to make sure that we have a presence in Austin, so that when things are happening there that could significantly impact the workforce in Brown County, we will know about it.  We can then reach out to whomever we need to, to prevent job loss.  We have a Texas Department of Transportation District Office here, plus the Ron Jackson Unit and the Havins Unit.  Those are all big job providers.  If the State is contemplating any changes to those agencies that could affect jobs in Brown County, we need to know about that.”

Modawell is optimistic about the future for the Chamber, pointing out that even through the COVID year of 2020 the Chamber’s membership held steady, with 506 members currently.  Also they recently completed this year’s Total Resource Campaign fundraising effort, with a record $151,000 in advertising and sponsorships sold.  “We are going to thrive.  We are going to continue to serve our members with quality events and provide value for their membership dues.”

This year’s President of the Chamber is Dustin Larremore, owner of the Dustin Larremore Agency, Farmers Insurance.  He echoed many of Modawell’s remarks and said he believes the Chamber’s job in the future will involve education and networking.  “The focus of the Chamber moving forward will be to re-direct — not so much recruiting business or operating events, but to be more beneficial for the everyday business.  And what I mean by that is, have the educational seminars, showing local business, small and large, how to operate more efficiently, how to use networking opportunities back and forth between businesses.  Online and Skype and Zoom and WebX and all those different vendors are great, but I think the Chamber’s focus is going to be pulling the community back together.”

Concerning the events he thinks the Chamber will continue to sponsor are events that “benefit the community on more of a goodwill level,” such as Corks and Caps, Sipping Under the Stars, the Christmas Festival and Parade, and the Trick-or-Treat Trail, which was extremely popular last year.  Also in the business education and networking vein, Larremore cited existing programs like Business After Hours, Leadership Brownwood, the Women’s Professional Summit, and the biennial Legislative Day and Economic Summit events.  He said new events are also being looked at.

Larremore closed with:  “We can work together with the community and the City to help businesses.  I can see a partnership growing and developing in the future to benefit the entire community.  We have to work together.  We have to be open, and we have to be communicative.  Our city theme is Feels Like Home.  We need to make sure we continue to Feel Like Home.”