It is with excitement of the future and sadness of leaving something that has been such a large portion of my life that I write this article.
Most of our community knows that I have announced my retirement effective Dec. 31 of this year.
The Chamber Board of Directors has hired my replacement. I welcome Sandy Douthey to the position as the next executive director of the Pagosa Springs Area Chamber of Commerce.
In the next couple of months, we’ll let Douthey tell her own story of coming to Pagosa Springs. It’s not so different than many of our stories. In a nutshell, Douthey comes to Pagosa from Sherman, Texas. She and her husband have visited Pagosa many times and decided they wanted to make this community their new home.
We are pleased to have Douthey join our team as she and I will be joined at the hip for the next few months. In passing on this torch, I decided to look back and see what changes the Chamber might have made in the past 20 years.
Twenty years ago, I inherited an artisan market that had already been very successful. Yet we have grown this event from about 50 vendors to 100 this year.
Twenty years ago, we inherited WinterFest activities. We created the Penguin Plunge allowing nonprofit agencies a “fun” — albeit cold — way to raise money for their organizations. We passed on the Anything Goes Downhill Sled Race to Build Pagosa, which now runs Sledz on Rez and uses this opportunity to raise significant funds for the organization. We’ve added a bonfire and, in conjunction with skijoring, are working to make WinterFest the ColorFest of the cold months.
Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a car show. This year we celebrated our 16th anniversary for the car show with more than 100 cars participating each year.
Twenty years ago, ColorFest was a hot air balloon rally and a wine and cheese tasting party in the parking lot of the Visitor Center. ColorFest now is a three-day event with a 10,000-square-foot tent, a beer tasting event added and three events rolled into one weekend.
And, this year, we are adding another event, Grillin’ and Distillin’ to our event repertoire. This BBQ cookoff and whiskey-tasting event will take place in August and will hopefully grow into another production to engage both locals and visitors.
I talk about events as they are a significant source of the Chamber’s income while also being created to draw visitors to the community to help our tourism-based economy. We would not be able to produce these events without the support of all the sponsors for each of the events. We are grateful for your support and hope in some way that you have benefited from the sponsorships.
We have also grown our business base. Twenty years ago, everything was manually recorded. We have upgraded to a database system and twice have enhanced the hosting service to meet our growing needs. As have most of our businesses, we have updated our website multiple times to offer a responsive site and a more user-friendly site.
We now offer a tiered membership system that offers benefits geared to what your business needs are. We have produced educational symposiums and forums to help you grow your business or become more business savvy. The most recent was this year’s Building Business Excellence Forum, which we hope to expand and produce for years to come. We just need your engagement.
There are many more activities that I have seen change, most I believe for the better. We’ll be talking more about these other improvements in the next few months.
When I replaced Sally Hameister, everyone said I could not replace her. I had no intention to. My intent was to take her successes and build upon them. I hope that Douthey will do the same and the businesses will support her in that effort. Thank you for giving me the best job in Pagosa.
Douthey and I will be shadowing everywhere around town in the next couple of months and I look forward to introducing her. Pagosa is my home, and I will continue to live here, albeit less frequently, as I pursue my passion, which is travel. And, hopefully, I’ll have more time to actually speak to you instead of running around with my hair on fire.
Thank you, Pagosa businesses. You are the reason leaving this job is so hard.
And, please, welcome Douthey as we make this transition.
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