Curating Community STORY BY BRITTANY SMITH PHOTOS BY BRIANNA WILSON & CARMEN RODGERS
Anna Chappelle and Shellie Whitfield encourage people to stay connected
THE WETUMPKA AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The Wetumpka Area Chamber of Commerce aims to enrich the local community and economy through delivering foresight, management, local services and useful information. “We connect businesses and help create relationships that help our businesses prosper,” Wetumpka Area Chamber of Commerce director Shellie Whitfield said. “That helps our entire community. It creates higher sales tax revenue, and that helps our community. When our businesses prosper, everyone prospers. “One of the greatest resources that we have is that we know everyone because everyone belongs to the chamber, and we can point anyone in the right direction. We are the resource. Believe it or not, there are a ton of elderly people in our community that do not have a smartphone or access to a computer, but they do have our phone number. We get phone call after phone call with people asking us for help with things, even something as simple as a phone number to Lowe’s. And that makes my heart happy because we can genuinely help people and businesses in the community prosper.” The chamber works hand-in-hand with Main Street Wetumpka, the primary goal of which is to bring economic value to downtown Wetumpka while the chamber’s primary goal is to connect businesses, create 14
relationships and build community. Together the two nonprofit organizations create a welcoming atmosphere where people want to come and enjoy time in the community. “The goal is to have everyone participating so that we can build great connections in the community and create relationships,” Whitfield said. “We always participate in any events that Main Street has going on and vice versa. I believe that is why we’ve prospered because we all work in tandem so well.” Another driving force for the Wetumpka Chamber and Main Street organizations is figuring out how to get the youth involved in the community. “We are really working on getting our youth invested in the chamber world. We want to teach them about entrepreneurship and tourism,” Whitfield said. “The pandemic didn’t hit us like it did in other areas. We actually thrived through the pandemic because we are such a loyal community. “Even before Hometown Takeover aired, our businesses were up 30 percent. Now they are up 500 percent. On average, before COVID-19, we used to see 2,000 people a month. Then that number changed to about 6,000, and now, since the show has aired, we see between 10,000 to 12,000 people a month pass in front of the chamber. It really is remarkable, and since we are obviously a tourism destination, our youth need to be educated on how to thrive in a tourist-centered locale.”
2021-22 FYI
