Chamber president plans new direction
Incoming Marion Chamber of Commerce president Jeff Cady has some definite ideas about the role a chamber should play in its community.
"Part of our efforts must be to figure out ways of keeping money in town and finding a way to bring out of town money in," Cady said.
Cady will take the reins Monday as chamber president during the organization's annual meeting.
A Beloit native, Cady and his family moved to Marion from Kansas City four years ago when Jeff began working with his father at the Jerry Cady Agency. Cady and his wife, Theresa, who works at Parkside Homes in Hillsboro, have four children, Allison, a sophomore; Morgan Jo, an eighth grader; Mitchell, a fifth grader; and Donna, a fourth grader.
"We moved from Kansas City to Marion, not to be in the insurance business, but because of family," Cady explained. "It was important for me to be around my family in a small town and be able to work with my dad. It didn't matter what it was, I would have been happy if Dad were running a shoe store."
Cady plans to take that exuberance for small town life and use it to help promote Marion. However, with major metropolitan shopping centers less than an hour away and super discount stores just down the road, Cady thinks Marion may have to come up with some non-traditional ideas to survive as a viable business community.
"We always tend to think that we need to recruit a big industry to town," he said. "That's important, but it's just as important to keep what we have. We're going to have to find our niche. How we go about doing that? I would like to see ideas come across my desk, whether good or bad, reachable or not."
Like all small towns, Marion was once a viable community offering all the services and commodities its citizens needed. However, as transportation improved and shoppers began taking their money out of town, gradually some of those services were lost.
"If we're going to find a way to keep Marion money in Marion, we'll have to grow a little bit and offer some of the things a big city might have," Cady said.
One of those things might be a movie theatre. Cady said he was interested in learning more about how Beloit managed to build a community-sponsored theatre using volunteer effort. In recent years, several small towns in north central Kansas, including Beloit, Lincoln, and Lucas, have managed to build and staff their own theaters, all with volunteer effort, donations, and in some cases, grant money.
"This cooperative theater idea is one that might be seen as being 'off the wall.' But that's one of those ideas I'd like to hear about," Cady said.
One of his first goals as chamber president will be to meet with current members and see how the chamber can best serve them.
"I plan to ask them 'what do you think we should do to promote your business better?'" Cady said. "Hopefully, we'll get some of those 'pie in the sky' ideas and put them into place."
The second goal will then be determining how to implement the ideas, and then fundraising as means of actually making it all happen.
Cady used the example of Chingawassa Days as an example of such a project. Spearheaded by a small group of people, who truly believed in it, the celebration has grown during just a few short years to be a premier Marion County event. But the event would never have happened without a vision, and the positive thinking, involvement, and work of a few people in the beginning.
"If you can find a way to get the community to support a project, it can build a positive environment," Cady said with a smile. "It would be nice to find that kind of project."
Cady noted that he fully expected to hear from the nay sayers in his quest.
"There's always a bit of reluctance whenever you're doing something new. But we need to get enough people on board to make it work," he said. "One of the worst things I've heard is 'we're done that before.' Well, maybe we can do it again, but change the spin. We have to create involvement. We need to get some community spirit.
"It's always easier to be negative than positive," Cady said. "But I believe if you focus on the positive, the outcome will be better."
Cady said he encourages anyone with any ideas to either talk to him or one of the other chamber board members.
"I think we have a good board," he said. "I feel we'll all be able to challenge each other more."
A self-confessed idealist, Cady said he has a vision for the future of Marion.
"Ideally, I would like to see an energetic friendly, sharing town where all businesses help one another to succeed," he said. "It may be unrealistic, but I think it all starts with a certain amount of involvement."
