Larry McElwain has served on the board of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce since the 1970s.

Now, as he becomes the organization’s chairman, the funeral director says he’s more optimistic than ever about the chamber — about the people involved and about its ability to form partnerships across the community.

McElwain said he’s particularly gratified about the growing partnership between the chamber and Kansas University. KU helped bring life sciences company Serologicals to town this year; Chancellor Robert Hemenway is leading Excellence by Design (the economic development fund-raising project) and will join the chamber board this year.

“This is the first time that I’ve seen the university step forward and want to be a partner in this area,” McElwain said. “It seems like for a lot of years the university was doing its own thing. Now there’s linkage in this area.”

McElwain shared other thoughts about his upcoming tenure with the Journal-World:

LM: We’re in the process right now of developing the goals for the next year of the chamber. I think probably one of our top goals will be to have a new president/CEO on board. We’re still in the direction of having that person on board by the middle of April at the latest, if possible. That’ll be a really important piece of carrying out our goals next year.

Jean Milstead has done a superb job of leading the organization. She’s stepped in like the professional that she is and stabilized things, helped us get through.

Our plans, my goals, would be to continue to carry out the mission of the chamber, which is to promote the economic vitality of the area, the city, the county, all of our people that live here. That will always be the No. 1 goal for the chamber chair.

The interesting thing is, we’re probably the only organization in town that that’s our basic mission, to promote the economic vitality of the community as a whole: business, industry, workers, everyone.

Chamber of Commerce chairman Larry McElwain says the chamber board needs to

Another goal, which I see as more of an internal thing, will be a strategic plan. The chamber has kind of operated from year to year with goals and objectives. It’s time to step back and look a little further into the future and hope we can come up with something three to five years as a goal.

J-W: What do you see as being some of the things you want to accomplish in that three to five years?

LM: Well, I think in development of a strategic plan, we need to focus on our organization and where we’re going, how we’re doing what we do, can we do it better?

One of my themes for the year will be bridge-building. I really think the chamber needs to be a bridge-builder in the community. Bringing people together: Downtown, neighborhoods, industry, labor and the government sector has a big piece in it. The bridge might be communication. Or it might be relationships. Both of those would work to bring people to a better understanding of what we do.

J-W: Following the primary election, there was some talk that the chamber might consider forming a PAC of its own. Is that anything you see happening?

LM: I don’t think so. It’s definitely not a priority of mine. I think PACs can be divisive. Again, I’m more inclined to want to bring people together who maybe have different viewpoints and try to find common ground as opposed to lining up on one side or another and fighting it out. That’s not a priority of mine and I have real reservations about that.

A model for me of bridge-building — and I’m not saying that it was totally successful and I’m not saying that it’s done — is ECO2. The model for that is what I’d like to see for the future rather than lining up and putting on our armament and going at each other. I don’t think we gain anything by that.

J-W: With ECO2, how do we move from it being a good start to producing good results?

LM: Well, I think one of the key ingredients for success would’ve been the sales tax issue. But that kind of got pulled off the board when the state raised the sales tax and now every level of government is struggling for money, so I don’t think we can count on that.

I think it has to be more trying to get together and visioning together what Lawrence is going to be, rather than battling it out on every project what it’s going be, to try to come to a better understanding of where we want to go with this community.

J-W: So ECO2 wasn’t a bad process — it was unfortunate timing and unfortunate circumstances?

LM: I think timing was the thing that really brought that down. I think Kelvin (Heck, outgoing chamber chair), who was largely responsible for setting up ECO2, had the right idea. It needs to be continued and not be shelved.

J-W: Serologicals was the big success of the last year. How do we hit another home run this year?

LM: I think partnerships will make it happen, just like it made that one happen. The partnerships that occurred there were between the city, the county, the university and the Kansas City Area Development Council. The chamber became a facilitator in all that, but it was bringing people together again, talking about something that would benefit a lot of people and not just create retail or create something else that wasn’t necessarily basic.

J-W: Talk about Excellence by Design. Where are we at with that?

LM: To me, the greatest reason for Excellence by Design was for the chamber and the business community to step up. We’ve had this partnership going on with the city, the county and the chamber and we’re equals. Well, if it’s our primary mission to create jobs and economic vitality, let’s step up and put more money down. That’s what the people who are investing in that are doing, trying to create something that will be good for everyone.

Where we’re at in the drive, I think we’re somewhere a little over $850,000 in pledges and around $250,000 in in-kind (contributions). So we’re close to the $1.2 million. We’re in reach of it.

What can be done with it? I think a lot can be done in the way of marketing our community. We’re up against needing more land for economic development, another business park of some kind. … There’s just things we need to beef up what we’re doing.

Another thing to look at — it used to be we were a kind of a power of our own over here. Then Johnson County came along and became a power in economic development. We’re still strong because we didn’t have to worry about Topeka. But now Topeka’s showing signs of growth and prosperity in the economic development area. It’s a shot over the bow of Lawrence that we’ve got to have the land, we’ve got to have the infrastructure, we’ve got to have the marketing tools.

Another future piece of this will be business retention. Not just going out and getting new people, new businesses, but helping those that are here be as good as they can be, as strong as they can be.

I think another piece of it that’s going to be increasingly important is going to be training for people. Conversations have already been held with the department of continuing education at the university, Kansas City Community College, Johnson County Community College, and I think there’s even discussions with Eudora High School about a vo-tech program that could educate people in the needed skills.

J-W: Where’s the vo-tech idea coming from?

LM: It’s coming basically from the manufacturing sector. They’re saying they don’t have people that can do the skills they need in maintenance, electrical, refrigeration, those kinds of areas.

Rather than trying to recruit people from Anderson County, Franklin County or Kansas City, why not take people that are Lawrence products and try to find a way to educate them in those areas.

J-W: What are the strengths that the chamber has to build on?

LM: It’s had success in the past. That’s not something that you go and lean on.

We have a very capable staff, they’re doing a tremendous job. We’re doing something different with the staff in that we’re allowing them to be apart of the visioning of where we’re going, the goals and strategies, those kinds of things. They’re being very open with us about what’s working, what we need to look at.

Another area we can build on is I think we have a strong membership, 1,500 members. A diverse membership, it’s not all in one sector. I think we have probably the strongest board I’ve served on in the four decades I’ve been on it. The board is very involved in where the organization’s going to go. It’s not necessarily the CEO is going to call all the shots about where we’re going to go. It’s a partnership between the CEO, president and the board.

The challenges are putting some mindsets about us that are incorrect to bed, re-educate people about what we’re trying to do. We’re not all about retail — we’re glad to have retail members. But 80 percent of our membership is small businesses, and we’ve got to refocus on the needs of small businesses. …

Just from a personal point of view, I love this community and enjoy watching it grow. Nothing happens easily here. But I wish there was a way the chamber can help not be a line-in-the-sand-drawer, but be the people that brings people across and see the benefits of both sides of things.