Greenville citizens have formed a new Chamber of Commerce to attract businesses and inform tourists in east Wayne County.
The East Wayne County, Missouri Chamber of Commerce met for the first time Sept. 1 at the Historic Greenville Museum and Community Center, with Clalyn Alcorn as president, Jason Hill as vice-president, David Bollinger as secretary and Amber Sturgeon as treasurer, and directors Mitchel Barks, Rye Huff, Jeanna Hunter, Dan Jennewein and Janette Walk.
The chamber will promote Wayne County communities and, Alcorn hopes, solve a local decline in civic involvement.
“He (Bollinger) suggested starting the Chamber of Commerce to get the local community involved and the local businesses all involved into one big group, so we could all work together,” she said.
Tourism is a staple in east Wayne County. Greenville is situated between Clearwater Lake and Wappapello Lake, with the Mark Twain National Forest and other state parks also nearby.
“When Greenville fills up with campers, the population of Greenville doubles, basically,” Bollinger explained. “And we want to utilize that for sure.”
However, visitors to the area often miss the town’s resources due to a lack of signage.
“We definitely have started the discussions about what can we do to get more signage out on the four lane to draw some of that highway traffic in. We know what’s there and locals know what’s there, but anybody passing through on 67, if they’re not local, they don’t know,” said Hill.
The chamber has already reached out to the Missouri Department of Transportation on this issue, and also is looking into creating a chamber directory for participating businesses.
Promoting businesses in and near Greenville will hopefully encourage investment there as well. This is one of the chamber’s greatest motivations, according to Hill.
“We’re very limited as to what businesses we are even capable of bringing into the Greenville area, for a lot of different reasons, but we believe that an organization like the chamber can not only celebrate the businesses that we currently have, but hopefully will be an avenue to try to find ways to bring new businesses into Greenville,” he said.
Bollinger and Alcorn want their efforts to help their neighbors as well.
“We plan on helping ... not just at Greenville, but also at Silva and Lodi, Coldwater up 67 and even US Highway 34 to the Bollinger County line and down E Highway to Wappapello, and we want to help everyone as much as we can,” Bollinger explained.
“Some people were very confused why we were including areas outside of just the City of Greenville,
said Alcorn. “But we feel like, you know, we support their businesses, and we interact in their communities. So we’re just hoping that we get some interaction with people outside of our community to our immediate community.”
The community response so far has been highly positive. At the time of his interview, Bollinger said their membership was at 35 businesses and climbing, thanks to an extensive campaign of letters and handing out applications door-to-door. Hill believes their biggest obstacle right now is uncertainty.
“I think sometimes people don’t understand what we’re trying to do. So it’s our job to educate them on what we feel like we can be doing in the future. But the response we’re seeing has been very positive,” he said.
The chamber also aims to boost community involvement in local events. It will have a presence at the Wayne County Fair Saturday, Oct. 9, and is leading a Trunk-or-Treat event from 4 - 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, on Maple Street in Greenville. Alcorn said there is already a huge difference between Trunk-or-Treat this year and previous years.
“It’s always been minorly attempted in the city, but with a little bit of pushing, we’ve already got quite a large amount of people joining in ... whereas before it was just kind of a forgotten thing,” Alcorn said.
A Christmas parade is also in the works.
The chamber will host its first quarterly membership meeting 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 12, at the Historic Greenville Museum and Community Center at 145 Oak Street in Greenville. Guest speakers for the evening include Wayne County Eastern District Commissioner Doug Wood and Wayne County Sheriff Dean Finch. The public is welcome to attend.