The President's Letter

The New Year gives us so much to look forward to: new opportunities for professional and personal growth, connections with new people, new openings for business, and a chance to take a new outlook on life. It’s the time of year to set new goals and to create new plans for success.

The Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce wants to work together with all of you to create a new vision of what can be. We offer you active support for your plans and and assistance in building your success.

The Chamber enters this New Year with much excitement. We see it as an opportunity to change and grow, to be better than ever before. We are already planning improvements to our member benefits and day-to-day operations, and we look forward to providing our members with some exceptional marketing opportunities through our website, newsletter, meetings, events & activities.

Some of the new events that we have on the drawing boards are:

• A groundbreaking Speaker Series, providing top-notch presenters offering new information and perspectives on building our local economy and our community…

• Our second year of Frederick Road Fridays, the wildly successful weekly event providing free live entertainment to our community, bringing hundreds of residents to our Main Street business area, and boosting traffic and revenue for Catonsville shops and restaurants…

• Our first-time-ever Restaurant Week, celebrating our fine dining venues and casual eateries for seven days after our already successful Taste of Catonsville…

• A brand-new initiative, still in the works – a Shop Local marketing campaign to encourage the Catonsville businesses and residents to support the wealth of shops right here in our neighborhood…

• Another first-time-ever event, Beautiful Catonsville Weekend, when members are invited to come out into the sunshine and put their creative talents to work to beautify Main Street. We’re brainstorming ideas for art exhibitions and competitions, volunteer support for shop front improvements, help with finding property improvement grants, and more…

And of course we’ll still have our signature events: the Taste of Catonsville, Annual Crab Feast, Arts & Crafts Festival, Catonsville Business Awards Banquet and monthly meetings.

What’s with all the excitement and optimism in this recessionary economy, with bad news coming over the airwaves every day? Simple: we believe we can work together to create change!

If the Catonsville Chamber, local businesses, and community residents join together, taking a creative approach to the challenges facing us – asking not if, but how we can solve them – we can certainly bring about a positive result.

Let’s create connections, businesses supporting one another to improve our local economic climate. Working with our local schools and colleges, involving them in our business plans and showing our support for their growth.

The New Year 2009 welcomes us with great opportunity -- we just need to open our eyes to see it and think outside the box to make things happen. And we greet the New Year with new enthusiasm, new visions and a new attitude. We will be successful!