scottsdalechamber.com
MEMBER COMMUNIQUÉ Nov. 2010 - Feb. 2011
Scottsdale Pride Scottsdale is indeed a special place. For the resident, it is a hightouch, well-designed city with a historically strong affinity for the things – large and small – that make it a wonderful place to live. Rick Kidder For businesses, Scottsdale offers a kind of caché not found in most suburban cities – an incredibly vibrant business presence. There is a pride of place evident in everything around us in Scottsdale. Our design standards are high. Our sign ordinance is among the most stringent in the nation. Our setbacks provide view lines. Our public art surpasses every community I know, and our streets seem a little bit cleaner and a little bit wider. Scottsdale in many ways has moved forward while holding fast to that which was good. It looked ahead without losing the power of what preceded us, a recipe for pride that too many communities forget. From Cavalliere’s Blacksmith Shop and the Rusty Spur to the energy and drive of Fashion Week and foodie bliss from top chefs, Scottsdale has held onto its Downtown while still changing with the times. As the city has grown, it has maintained a rugged insistence to excellence of place. Our parks and libraries are the envy of any community. Our Airport is a bustling hub of activity for recreational and business travel alike. Our neighborhoods feel special and alive, and our business centers have become diversified and as rugged as the desert itself in the face of tough challenges. These last few years for everyone have been times to separate needs from wants. And it is from observing the identified needs that one gets a sense of the values of the place. Scottsdale has had to make difficult choices but still opened a new library, invested in the arts and worked hard to ensure that citizens still had a community about which they could feel great pride. We are fortunate to live and work in such a place.
Your Voice. Your Future. Great Places reinvent themselves. Great places reflect a set of core principles derived from the community itself. Great places address their immediate challenges in light of the greater goal. Scottsdale must not just be great now but rather must be great in perpetuity. Mediocrity is unacceptable. On September 15th, 250 of Scottsdale’s most influential business and civic leaders gathered together to launch a community dialogue and visioning process about Scottsdale’s economic future called Next Steps Scottsdale: Building an Action Plan for Economic Growth. Those in attendance included citizens, business leaders representing both large and small businesses, members of the public, elected leaders, and volunteer members of the city’s boards and commissions. The full house of leaders in attendance vowed to be part of the solution, with 97% of the attended responding to a post-symposium survey indicating they would attend future Next Steps Scottsdale events and more than 90% saying that the symposium has energized them to become more active in economic development policy. Seven years have passed since several key business leaders in Scottsdale brought us Which Way Scottsdale? That oft-quoted report was the result of comprehensive research and interviews with a large number of Scottsdale’s stakeholders conducted, compiled and analyzed by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU. Which Way Scottsdale? effectively changed the dialogue in our city at a time when we were only beginning to recognize that we were a city without a clear, consensus-driven path to the future. Our hope for Next Steps Scottsdale is that it does the same. In those seven years since Which Way Scottsdale?, much has changed and much remains the same. The questions raised by the Morrison Institute report ring as true today as they did then, although the economic context has changed dramatically. As a community, we must address how we will build on our own success without sacrificing the things that make Continues on pg. S@W 07
The Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in Scottsdale providing business advocacy, education, networking, leadership and exposure opportunities to our member businesses. The Chamber actively works to maintain Scottsdale’s high quality of life and create an environment where business innovation, excellence and entrepreneurship can thrive. For more information visit www. scottsdalechamber.com or call 480.355.2700.
Rick Kidder, President/CEO
In Business Magazine
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