Chamber searches for director, home

WESLEY CHAPEL -- Trying to burnish its boom town credentials, the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce is searching not just for its first ever executive director, but a headquarters to call its own.

Up to now, the 4-year-old chamber, which spun off of the Central Pasco Chamber of Commerce in 1998, has relied on volunteers and borrowed office space in a local floral shop.

No longer.

"We're out of the baby stage," said chamber board member Alison Morano, who heads the committee trying to hire an executive director by Christmas. "Now it's time to concentrate on the businesses in the area."

Chamber membership has plateaued at about 225, but the ranks of potential members are swelling.

As part of the commercial explosion on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, a SuperTarget, Publix and Beall's already are in the ground.

East Pasco Medical Center wants to open a new hospital on the road in the next few years, although county planners might have stuck a stick in the spokes by insisting the multistory building not exceed Pasco building height limits of 36 feet.

A new mall at State Road 56 and Interestate 75, scheduled for completion no later than 2008, could house more than 100 stores. Land opposite the mall could sprout with big-box-style stores along the lines of Best Buy and Home Depot.

More than 1,000 hotel rooms also are on the drawing boards, some accounted for by a three-story Best Western recently approved for Oakley Boulevard west of I-75.

The chamber is scouting possible stand-alone headquarters sites on SR 54 about a mile in either direction from the interstate, though it has yet to make an offer for land.

More pressing is the hiring of the executive director. The chamber wants a person comfortable with public relations and marketing, Morano said.

Membership drives and chamber mixers would fill up much of that person's work week. The salary would approximate that of similarly sized chambers, probably no more than $30,000 a year.

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