Winter Park History Museum's "A Stroll Down Park Avenue"
Winter Park History Museum's "A Stroll Down Park Avenue"
An Interview with Betsy Gardner Eckbert, President/CEO of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce
WPHM Board member Paul Twyford interviews Betsy Gardner Eckbert, President/CEO of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce. They talk about community, the Chamber as a whole and their Centennial Anniversary celebration.
The Winter Park History Museum presents a stroll down Park Avenue the podcast.
Paul Twyford:Welcome to another edition of the Winter Park History Museum podcast. We are joined today by the CEO and President of the Winter Park, Chamber of Commerce. Betsy Gardner Eckbert. Thank you for joining us.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Of course, thank you for having me.
Paul Twyford:Absolutely. So, we will get into your background a little more in a few minutes. But first, tell us a little bit about for the people in our audience that maybe aren't familiar with chambers of commerce and what they do. What is the Chamber of Commerce? And what purpose does it serve in the community.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:So broadly, chambers of commerce, usually participate in two key functions. One is a broad category called economic development. And that can take several shapes. Also, chambers of commerce, usually participate in workforce development. And then some do work in what I would call business advocacy. And that sometimes falls under that economic development category. More specifically, at the Winter Park chamber, our mission is to convene people and ideas for the benefit of both our businesses and our community. So we're always looking for at least a double bottom line benefit for the community that builds Winter Park and also strengthens the fabric of our businesses and the business community itself.
Paul Twyford:Great. So I think that the role of chambers have has sort of evolved with the times and there was a time when chambers, I think, I don't want to say rest on their laurels, but they could just sort of have some business after hours functions. And that was kind of good enough to just bring the business community together. And I think that those times are maybe behind us. And I think that you've been particularly visionary in sort of re developing what a chamber can do and what how it can benefit the community, particularly the business community. So tell us a little bit about what you've done here. Since you've been at the Winter Park chamber to kind of move us into the sort of next era of what a chamber is,
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, chambers, I think you're right in saying rested on their laurels. I think in many communities, they were the only game in town in terms of influence peddling. And I think that there weren't competitors to how people network and create business opportunities like LinkedIn, or meetup or Facebook, or any number of virtual things we can do now. I think also communities are changing right before our very eyes. So it's really interesting, because people now do not define community by geographic boundaries. Whereas before, that was the only way you could identify a community because how could a community exist? Well, now you've got gaming communities that are global, you've got all kinds of communities that are virtual and global. And then if you ask young people, how do you define community, it's going to be around affinity instead of a geography. And so we have to understand that those those drivers are shifting under our feet. And that pressure is being exerted on all kinds of incumbent community. kingmakers like country clubs, places of worship, women's clubs, historical societies, all of these institutions have to rethink their role. Now, that community has just been blown up, right, the idea of community is completely shattered and being remade. And that's a very exciting thing. So what that does mean is a democratization of opportunity. And we're trying to make sure that we align our practices with this newly imagined idea of community and creating on ramps for community that might not have existed before. So the chamber was really good at bringing together influential people and leveraging that influence on behalf of the business community. And that usually meant male and white. And we have to acknowledge that and that's, that's okay. Because we love male and white people. I'm sitting with one right now I'm deeply fond of, but I think that we need to make sure that we're imagining models that go beyond that. Are we auditing for how young people participate? Are we auditing for how women participate people of color, new businesses, small businesses, large businesses. And so we now actually are building models that go beyond this geographic idea of community. And we see ourselves as a participant in at least regional decision making, not just the nine square miles that are Winter Park, but we sit in an in a geographic position of enormous growth and opportunity. And we need to make sure that we're enabling people in our community to take advantage of those things, and also contribute to the problems that emerge from that kind of growth. And so I see us playing that type of leadership role. We also know because we're a member of an association of chamber leaders, who recognize that event participation usually only comprises about 20% of of Chamber members going to those things, right. So if we're resting on our laurels, and we ask people all the time, how do you measure engagement in the Chamber of Commerce, they always say, events. And so if we're relying on events to be the only way people perceive engagement, we're only reaching 20% of our members and expecting them to feel that that we've delivered on a promise to them, well, we can't do that, and have that be a sustainable model. So we've built out all kinds of digital tools, not only to create this sense of virtual community that transcends geography, but also to measure things in the way people are being held accountable for in their places of business. And to be able to say, Look, you got, you know, 8000 hits on this social media post, when we reposted it for you. That's the kind of thing we know people are measuring now. And we actually have a duty to deliver measurable return on investment for the dues that are invested with us. So we've we've remade this model to recognize those key disruptive forces that I think are quite positive. I don't think that, you know, people come to us all the time and say, Well, can I join the chamber? Because I don't live in Winter Park? Of course, do you have a vested interest in how things go here? Do you want to reach Winter Park customers? Do you want to have your brand building happen in Winter Park? Do you want to have a community presence here? I don't care if you live here or not. In fact, we've had international members here since I started, that don't live in even in the United States that have a vested interest in Winter Park. So we've tried to build out this model that transcends the geography and I think we've been somewhat successful doing that.
Paul Twyford:Certainly. And you, you mentioned events being really just kind of one aspect of a chamber and I think like you pointed out, most people perceive a chamber as only the events that it hosts and, and creates. Tell us about how you have tried to take an intentional approach to those events, rather than make the you know, make it just sort of the business after hours kind of approach.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Unflattering periods of time in this chamber was when I came on board, and we had done a or the board had rightly and with vision done in a community survey to kind of say, How do you feel like the Chamber's doing, it wasn't very pretty. And people said, Oh, this feels like a drinking society. Or this just feels like alcohols at everything. And this No disrespect. But this just and I just thought Now who's going to actually pay to go drink somewhere, because I can just go to a bar and drink and pay for my alcohol and go home? That's a little plug for your business. So but I think, you know, we had to understand that that business after hours was the only way people used to network in this town. And that's okay, that was okay for then. But there was there was too much emphasis on that kind of old school schmoozing that I think people aren't resonating with we know young people want to they're there. They want a sense of purpose and identity, to the things that they're associating with, and we had to create custom tracks of experience that suited a variety of needs and had a very intentional brand identity attached to them. So when we overhauled our events, I remember in the first year asking our team, why do we do this? Sometimes we couldn't answer that question. And when we couldn't answer that question, that was our cue to stop doing it. Right. And so we now have much more intentional tracks of experience. We have customized solutions for everything. And what we're finding is when we like every chamber, we we do a sponsor guide. And we let people know we actually didn't have a sponsor guide. We sort of went ad hoc Oh, we just did this event. Would you sponsor something and we sort of did it two months before For and it's a no, no, that's not how marketing budgets work marketing budgets work on an annual basis. People who want to be at the Big Boy table want to be intentional about how they spend their marketing dollars, they want to be strategic about that. So we're going to meet them where they live. And we're going to give them the sponsor guide in October, when they're planning their either fiscal year or calendar year. So we meet both of those needs. And then we give them a customized menu of things that they can sponsor. And what we find is that sponsor guide is usually about 60% sold the day it comes out, because people perceive value when we create more intentionality around what it is that event is about. And we can match fit for purpose a lot better. And we really want people who sponsor things with us to say, Whoa, I got X number of leads on that. And I can actually quantify how many cents it cost me for a lead out of that. And that's, that's what we're here to do. Right. And I don't think that's what Chambers of Commerce needed to do, even 20 years ago, certainly not 50 or 100 years ago, but they sure as heck do now. Otherwise, if you can't measure that return, you're not going to get signed off on that request for those marketing dollars. It's just how it works. So we need to understand that and that's where I'm grateful for my background in these types of environments, guiding that process and understanding it. So just having a specific identity, and we have lots of identities. So you don't have to be, you know, a mid career woman to have a way to plug in here. There's lots of things we do that are lifestyle events for our small, more retail facing business. We have, you know, very meaty, you know, sort of government advocacy events, we have community events where we're just celebrating the holidays, we have lots of different things and ways for different entities to plug in.
Paul Twyford:You mentioned a moment ago, your staff, and no, a leader is only as good as the people that are helping that leader execute, right. And so tell us a little bit about your staff, because you've put together a dynamite team of people, and I want you to have an opportunity to brag on them a
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:This is how I've tricked this community little into thinking I'm good at my job, right? So I have the most amazing team of people who've all been curated for something else that's not in the job description. So it's really I hire for the things I cannot train. I hire for aptitudes and experiences, maybe existing relationships that they have, for things mostly that are soft skill, and I audit for soft more than hard skill in my hires. What is their capacity to learn? What is their flexibility, good judgment, sense of context, all of those things are important to me. And those are the things that I've hired for. I've hired people who wouldn't otherwise be available, were they not prioritizing their families first. And that's not in every case. But that's in many cases here. And so we have been successful in attracting. I'll give you a great example, Stephanie Biddle, who's on our communications team used to be a writer for the Harvard Business Review. Okay, now I couldn't get access, I could not get access to her where she not, you know, already home focusing on her family, right. So we're getting world class communications talent, because we allow Stephanie to work on a schedule that meets the needs of her family. And so that has been a model that has worked really, really well for us here. That's not everybody here. But that's an awful lot of people. I will say that everybody here knows that their family is first with me. And that's a really important thing that we do. You know, today's Passover, we've got Jewish people on our team. Passover is the most important thing in our office today. Nothing else is more important than Passover for our Jewish team members. And so we try to lead with a recognition that our team our people first and employees second,
Paul Twyford:yeah, yeah. And I think that you've developed that culture here. And that doesn't happen by accident. So while while you can jest about how it's them that that make you look good. You're the one that built that team. So kudos to you for doing that. So this is the centennial celebration of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce 100 years. So let's talk a little bit about that. So we're sitting in this beautiful building, which is the chamber building. So walk us through where the chamber has sort of lived in the past before this building was built and sort of the history of how this building came to be and all the history behind all this.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, it's I had no idea how much fun it was going to be to mark this anniversary. I mean, I kind of had an idea. But the reality of celebrating this moment has been so much richer and more enjoyable than I ever could have imagined. And I'm a history major. This is actually the first time I've been able to use my history degree since I graduated some over 30 years ago. So it's been really, really fun. We curated a video which your organization kindly hosts at your exhibit. It's been really fun to have a curatorial eye about the elements of this moment that we should be sharing and leveraging. And, you know, I love contextualizing this moment by thinking about what was around Winter Park in 1923. People were still riding horses. Yeah, right. And so we've got this kind of kernel of sophistication and organized infrastructure in our I don't even know if was nine square miles back then. But it was tiny, right. And Winter Park actually had more influence than Orlando. And we had this highly organized business community was an existing library. And we had doctors and attorneys and stores and a railroad we had a vibrant citrus industry, logging industry. We already had Rollins College, your alma mater. So we have these engines of opportunity, poetically, the chain train is coming through in the background, as I'm talking about this. We know the role of getting the train situated here through the influence of Chase and Chapman was significant. And then, of course, land was already valuable in Winter Park. And we had no idea how much more valuable it would become. But we had this thriving tourism industry. You know, there were things happening here in a way that they weren't happening in Orlando, that fort system was still very much the way people in Florida communicated and traded and, and existed an incomes, this highly sophisticated, rich core. And I use rich, ironically, because they were rich, they came here to experience a better quality of life in the winter. And so there was this interesting little dynamic, organized community that in 1923 said, no, no, for our business community, we're going to be intentional. And we're going to bring civic leaders together and create something that will make sure that we're successful, prosperous, and community building now, thank God, they didn't do that in 1929. Right, they did. 23. Yeah. So you know, this is allowing the chamber to gain some strength going into the depression, so that we were able to weather that storm. And as we know, there were a lots of insults to the economy that were to come. And so it was, it was a wonderful time. And then, you know, to see all the different things that have emerged as strengths coming out of Winter Park, you know, I think back to Phil Crosby running the quality college out of here, I think about all kinds of punching above their weight business, you know, you probably know fattmerchant, which is now stacks, which was a unicorn company valued at over a billion dollars started here, right, we've got, we've got all kinds of venture funds. Here, we've got corkcicle. headquartered here, we've got Rifle Paper Company, these are recognizable global brands. And we've got serious into institutional investors here, we've got foundations that play a key role in lifting the entire region. We've got an awful lot of muscle here now. And I think so much of that strength comes from the vision of setting up this community of having those transportation connectivity, key infrastructure points ready to go. And I think having that kind of gravitas that comes from this isn't some backwater place where we're eating raccoons, right? These are sophisticated people coming down from the north with respect to the raccoon. And this is, you know, and Rollins added that kind of lift of gravitas. So there was that, that whole kind of a creative experience of all these partners contributing something special. And you've got one plus one equaling nine, right, and that's been going on for a long time. So we now all get to experience the lift that came from those 100 years of success. And as a homeowner in Winter Park, I can tell you, it's really nice to check in on those values every now and then in Zillow. But it also creates a downside which we're focused on now as well, which means that it's just too hard to get property here and on ramp here. So those are some of the victims of our, or consequences of our success, which we're now trying to work through and create opportunities for people despite our success. So that's kind of where we are now.
Paul Twyford:Yeah, yeah. So let's, let's talk a little bit about you and and your background because you grew up here. You're a Winter Park Wildcat from Winter Park High School and went to UF.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Yep.
Paul Twyford:On a music scholarship, right?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Yes.
Paul Twyford:And a history major. So tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up here.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:So we knew this place was special growing up here. And that was part of the identifiable experience of being from here. It was almost like a we call it the winter net, right? There's this undercurrent of communication of messages that goes on here. And it's, it's it's active, everybody needs to be aware of it. But there was this immediate sense of civic pride that was conveyed to us we moved here. And I'll tell you, I think one of the deepest conveyances was the East India ice cream company, to come to a place we were being relocated from College Park, Maryland, where my father was a professor at the University of Maryland, and he was the band director at the University of Maryland marching band director and band director. And he was recruited to come here and start UCF's band program from nothing. And we were we came down here, and we stayed in the Langford hotel, and I've never seen anything like the Langford. I'm now old enough and ironic enough to think that wasn't quite as cool as I thought it was. But um, we walked from the Langford to the East India ice cream company, and I got a scoop of Oreo ice cream on a cone. And I thought, this is Shangri La. Yeah, right. I mean, this is a really rethinking the ice cream here. This must be a fantastic place. But that experience of you know, everything was scaled around the pedestrian in College Park, Maryland. We walked everywhere. We biked everywhere. We were all over the Maryland campus, it was very much a little eaden of community in the midst of the Greater Washington DC MSA. Right. So we were used to that we got here and thought, oh my gosh, this is even better. We can walk outside all year long, because the weather's nice, except in the summer. But you know, we can really be outdoors. We can really walk and Park Avenue is so cool. Well, then, you know, we moved here when I was 10. So I had immediate freedom conferred upon me when I moved here because I could get on my bike, go to Park Avenue, meet my friends, get an ice cream, go to Cottrell's and buy a length of ribbon, you know, in middle school to put around my neck and tie it like Princess Diana. That was very exciting. And so we really and then you know, there was a store that I think defined the 80s called from the heart on Park Avenue. And you had to have your lunchbox personalized by from the heart with the little bubble letters. You had to have everything monogrammed and from the heart could help you with that. It was wonderful. And then I remember getting, you know sort of my my dresses for dances at Jacobson's getting my shoes at Jacobson's I remember even and this is hard for me buying my children's baby clothes at Jacobson's and so that's really hard that Jacobson's isn't in existence anymore. But that sense of Gary Brewer circulating through Jacobson's who's our former mayor, and they would write your receipt on this old tiny thing. And you could smell the carbon from the paper. And they'd write out the receipt with pen and they give you the triplicate copy of a comb. And I just thought this is it. This is Mayberry. We found it right. And then going to Winter Park High you had this sense of we represent this special thing, this school is part of this special thing. And we were quite snobby about it. We felt sorry for the kids from the other school, right. And we just thought this there's nothing more special than this. Look at how many people go to Ivy League's from our school. Look at how many people are in the IB program. Look at how we're killing it on the debate circuit nationally. I mean, it just went on and on and on. Our band program was strong, our orchestra program, choral program, all those things are real sources of pride, and just confirmed for us that we were special and snobby for a reason, right. And so there was this enormous sense of civic pride that I think is very much alive. Now we do have to be quite careful about it. Because there can be a tendency to feel wrapped up in how special we are and make sure that nobody else can access our special and as a Chamber of Commerce. I think one of our jobs is to make sure that we're exporting our special. And so I think that's always the tension that exists between who gets to have access to the special and who doesn't, right. We want to make sure that everyone has access to it because it is special and it's something we created together. And we should be leveraging together so that other people can can join in.
Paul Twyford:Absolutely, absolutely. So you mentioned your father and he talked a little more about because you you kind of glossed over just how big of an impact he had on what is now the UCF marching band that literally didn't exist? Before he came along?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:It's funny, I often wonder how I became an entrepreneur, I felt like it was a weird path for me. I feel like I look at you and think, Well, of course, Paul's an entrepreneur, right? He knows what to do about that.
Paul Twyford:He's got no other good skills and right.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:And I've seen you do it so many versions, so Well, right. And I think How did I end up as an entrepenur, I started out working for a fortune 100 blue chip company, right. And I, I had trouble with that there was a lot of top heavy, you know, slow to move elements of that experience. But I ended up as an entrepreneur, and I look back now and think about my parents, engaging in deeply entrepreneurial things, just literally pulling things out of the ground. And I'm so grateful that I had that experience. So I what I didn't tell you was my mother's involvement with this organization. We'll get to that in a minute. And how that relates to the building. We're in a question I didn't really answer. So we'll get to that. But we came here because UCF had just been rebranded UCF from FTU, right? And they figured out rightly, that investing in the football program was a way to grow. And that you couldn't do that without having a marching band. But here's the thing, they hadn't allocated a lot of resources to doing that outside of recruiting my dad here. So we got here and my dad had come from a serious band pedigree, he was trained at the University of Michigan, which is kind of the place to go to learn conducting, and that kind of thing. And so he came through the world of that very serious military uniform type band pedigree, and then had emulated that at the University of Maryland. And so came here and there was no budget for uniforms for this band. So they their first season, they were on the field in jeans and white t shirts. And I remember thinking, Oh, we're not in Kansas anymore. This is kind of sad, right. And my father had to go through the admission files. I don't think you'd be allowed to do this now, because of HIPAA or something. I don't know, privacy, I don't know. But he went through the admission files. And they did an audit of everybody who had been in band in high school. And they actually called them and said, Would you like to be in this marching band that we've started? And so that's how they found people to be in this year one marching band? Well, I will tell you, I'm still in touch with the people that formed that core group. They were so much part of our family. They were in our kitchen all the time. And they had this really powerful moment of coming together and creating something together, which was actually cemented by the fact that, as you probably know, the drum major is the onfield, leader of the band, right? Well, the Drum Major was this amazing guy from Wildwood called Troy Driggers. And after his first year as Drum Major was killed in a car accident and struck down I think, at the age of 20. And so that really even galvanized that group even further, and I think gave them a sense of purpose about accelerating the success of that group. And I remember I remember my mother, my dad saying, well, we don't have a fight song. And my mother, who was very much like this said, Well, I'm going to sit down and write the words to it right now are the music. So my mother wrote, actually, the lyrics UCF charge onto the field. So that whole charge on thing my mother came up with in our kitchen counter, and everything was so Bootstrap, you know, shoestring It was ridiculous. And then I remember in year two, there was actually money for uniforms. And my mother went out to this men's store around the committee and found all these different size pants that people could use. They were black pants, and then she had these white satin sashes, made. And then they ordered these kinds of gold V neck tops that constituted a uniform and they had these weird white hats. I look back at it now and think I was quite influenced by the 70s. But it was a uniform, right? And it gave them a sense of identity. And so my parents did that together. And now it's interesting because I didn't know this my father passed away in 2007. The uniforms at UCF, now bear his monogram. And one of the hallmarks of having a really well funded football program slash marching band is having an identifiable and unique practice facility. And UCF now has a marching band practice facility with like lockers for the instruments, bathrooms, you know, everything you would want, and it's named for my father. So that's kind of cool to see that part. And then my mother was a school teacher. And she we got here and my mother said, this is just terrible. The condition of these schools is terrible. And as you do you just sort of run for political office to fix that. When you don't know anybody. And you certainly don't have deep pocketed supporters. You just go ahead and put your name out there and run for school board in 1986, which is what she did. And I remember hand silkscreening T shirts, we made them ourselves for her campaign. We did everything ourselves. My mother didn't have a business suit and she borrowed a St. John's suit from her friend. And I'll never forget the smell of that suit smelling like sweat and dry cleaning solution because she was campaigning in the summer. And I had to drive her all kinds of places and, and that was the only suit she had. So she wore it everywhere and not unsurprisingly, it the person that owned it said you can keep it. Yeah. And the person that owned it was actually Judy Leigh, whose husband Ken Lay of disgraced former Enron was the head of Florida gas. And they were living here because of that. And of course, Judy had access and resources to get pretty spectacular clothes and loan that to my mother to campaign. And she then won her school board race, remarkably, and went on to be a civic leader. 30 years of elected office in Orange County. And while she was then the Clerk of the Court of Orange County, served on the Chamber of Commerce board, and actually led the building committee to create the building that we're in now, coming off of the kind of sad history of the chamber being located in a very unglamorous citrus packing house that was just south of the post office. So I remember there was like rattling window unit air conditioners, and it was just sort of sad and smelled a little musty. And it wasn't the kind of place that said, Hey, we're a really upscale business community. And my mother felt very strongly about seeing the home for us that we deserved, and kind of, if you ever met her, there was never a better fundraiser that's ever lived. And so she was really good at helping create the capital stack to get this done. And then there were huge influential people like Bill Walker of Winderwheedle who helped create the instrument for the joint development agreement between the city and the chamber to get all this going with respect to the Welcome Center Operations downstairs and the Chamber operations upstairs. So it took a whole community to get that done.
Paul Twyford:Yeah. Excellent. job of bringing us back around to the question.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Sorry, sorry,
Paul Twyford:About while ago, that's good. No, not sorry, at all. So um, so So your mom, you've talked a little bit about and I she was such a pillar of the community, right. The the, arguably the most prestigious individual award you can win in this city is the Lydia Gardner, Citizen of the Year award. So I talk a little bit more about her who she was as a person and and just just give us a little more about her.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, I didn't realize what my mom was really all about until she died, which is the sad paradox of life, right? I knew what she was about. She was about getting stuff done. Right? If there was something that wasn't working, right, she was going to get that working right period end of the story. And there was nothing that was going to pull her off course. And she was very good at mobilizing resources. One of my favorite stories about my mom is being in Publix with her and she was in a campaign for re election. And she ran into some family friend, I can't even remember who it was. But she literally grabbed this person on the arm gently put her arm on their forearm, look them right in the eye and said, Paul, we haven't gotten your check yet. And I'm like, Mom, we're over the asparagus. Like, are you really doing this in the Publix produce section. And it was literally like, we're getting your check, Paul, we just haven't gotten it yet. There wasn't even a discussion about like when it's coming. And I just thought, wow, this is the very top of the game. This is impressive. And she was so convinced of the appropriateness of what she was doing all the time, it just seemed natural to her that people would want to contribute to it financially. And she was very effective at doing that kind of stuff. But my mom believed in this concept of civic rent. And this is one of the things that we're struggling with now. There was a sense a while ago in the golden era of chambers, that if you ran a successful business in this community, you owed the chamber that was part of your civic rent, this is the community that made you successful, you now pay back into it so that others can be successful. That's not as intact as it used to be. And that's something that my mother spent an awful lot of time focusing on. And that was another case where people would say, Oh, I don't need to join the chamber. My business is successful. And my mom would tell you right away, that's exactly why you need to join the chamber. So she was very good, very direct, but the thing that I learned when she died is what everybody said to me was your mother had the most amazing smile. And I thought, gosh, is that the way we memorialize women leaders and actually was in her case, because my mother got a lot of stuff done. That was very transformative, which is essentially change that people don't like. Yeah. And she did. It was such a smile and a gentle way of helping bring you along, that you actually loved your participation in it. And my mother revolutionized the way court filings and court documents are made available to the public, not just in Orange County, but in Florida. So when she was clerk of courts, she took all every court document and digitized it and they went online now, being able to go on the myorangeclerk.com and look up court records. She was the person that made that happen. She was then president of the Florida court clerk's association. So I'm very happy, I can say without screwing that up, and help the entire state of Florida digitize all of its records, which itself is a much more way transparent way and a democratized way for us to access information, no longer do you have to be able to go to the courthouse to get access to records, park in their parking garage, all that kind of stuff. It's just get on, you can even do it on your phone. Right. And so that's her legacy. Because of that she won the governor's Sterling Award, which is a quality award that mirrors the Malcolm Baldrige Baldrige Award, it's very, very hard to get. And she really revolutionized that entire information delivery process for Orange County, and really taught me what you're supposed to do with your employees, which is care for them. She had 400 employees. And I remember saying, Why are you going to another funeral people seem to be dying a lot at your office. And because I said, What are you doing today on going to a funeral? Why? And she'd say, Oh, this is the manager of the traffic division, his father died. And my mother would go to that, because she believed in showing up for your people when they're going through a difficult time. And I just thought my younger version of me thought, This feels really like a time suck. Why are you doing this. And these people worked so hard on behalf of her vision, because they knew she was backing them to the hilt. And so it was a really cool thing to watch. And it was definitely the thing that informed the very little I knew how to do during COVID, which was, first and foremost, take care of your people, and take care of your community. And she taught me how to do that. So I had that as a playbook and probably the only playbook for what to do during COVID, which was very challenging.
Paul Twyford:Yeah. And that's, so let's talk about that. So we find ourselves in 2020. In a global pandemic, none of us alive have ever been through something like that before. And every single one of us is challenged in new ways that we never expected. And the chamber sort of rose to the occasion, tell us about how the chamber reached out to support the business community and the community at large during COVID.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, I want to start by thanking our board, because I went to them early on and said, I need the authority to do some things that aren't going to feel good to you guys right now. And they said, Okay, that's, that's fine. And they deserve a lot of credit for that. Because it's important for people to understand it in the nonprofit, the paid executive doesn't just get to do whatever he or she wants to serve the board, right. And so I can't just pull up a couple of pistols and ride I've got to be accountable to the board. So I remember those early days of COVID. I felt like we were doing 600 days in one. Everything was accelerating so quickly, and everything was changing under our feet. And I remember we had taste of Winter Park, I believe on March 11, which would have been a Wednesday. And I remember people saying to me, are you worried about you know, this pandemic or this wasn't a pandemic then are you worried about this Coronavirus? Yeah. And I was like, well, we're watching it. And we had just shot a video on Tuesday saying, you know, watch us for more information as this emerges. We're going to help you this is not the time to panic. We're going to deliver information to you stay tuned. Right. So we had tasted Winter Park on Wednesday, the 11th. We had we decided to have hand sanitizer around at the event, which was something we always had, but we doubled down on hand sanitizer. That was the modification we made for that. We then had an executive committee meeting on Thursday morning, the day after, and I remember the CEO of adventhealth Winter Park, Justin Bernoulli sitting in this office saying to me, you can't be open anymore. And I thought, wow, Justin's really taken this thing all the way to the bank. And I remember thinking he said you can't have people come into the office anymore. You can't have any more events. You can't be bringing people together. This is for real. And my er is jammed with people. I've got admissions, this is no longer happening in Asia. This is right here. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, what do we do. And so the next day, I decided with the with the board's help, I said, no employees coming in here, we're closing the visitor center. We're creating a community container so that people can access whatever help they need, I have no idea what they're going to need. But we're going to be on duty to help ferry needs and resources. And so we closed the building the following Monday, we immediately created a full time number that rang to our concierge team so that anybody who needed something could call us and we do our best to connect people to that. I sent the team home, we started doing a series of videos saying you should be sending your team's home, which five days before I didn't believe, right. But here we were. And we felt that it was important for us to be a role model of what success and good stewardship looked like. And so we were doing everything at that point on videos and webinars from my kitchen. I've since learned you don't put the computer below your chin and you don't have bad lighting. But, you know, the early videos are not flattering. So you know, if you don't like me, you could go look those up. So we, we said, well, here's what we're going to do, I called them I called when I talked to the board, I said, I don't want to furlough anybody, you're going to be tempted to do that. Because nobody wants to be part of a board where we bled through our resources. But I'd like to ask you to cashflow payroll for a year and see what we need. We have the resources to do it. Please let me keep this whole team intact. We need to serve this community. And if we don't, if we're sleeping, while our business community is going through the biggest insult since the Depression, no one will ever come back to rely on us again. So this is the this is the moment where we either get busy living or get busy dying. Right. And to our board's credit, they unanimously said Go for it, Betsy, we support your vision, do it. So I had no idea if we're paying people from reserves for a year, I had no idea. Most Well, I would say a third of our income is based on event revenue. A third of it is based on program revenue through leadership, Winter Park, youth leaders and relaunch. Well, how are we going to get those people in a room now we have no idea. And then we have advertising revenues and membership revenues. And if people don't have a place to come, are they going to feel that membership has value anymore, we had no idea. But we knew that somebody had to step up and understand what the needs are advocate that for them, certainly make sure government resources flowed through to them. And we had people who didn't have really good banking relationships. And unfortunately, if they were low on the totem pole with Bank of America, your loan request is going through in a couple of weeks and might not be part of their whole package. Right? So we were helping people connect to resources. We didn't know PPP was coming, we had no idea. But we were helping people, you know, here's how you're going to fill out a first the Cares Act, then PPP. Here's how you fill this out. Here are the bankers that are available that will take you if you don't have an existing relationship with them. Then we have a daily webinar series, what are you going to do about the HR problems? How are you going to notice people? Can you require your people to test can you do these things? We're going to bring in HR people to help you think through that. What are the legal ramifications? Do you need to have hold harmless clauses for everything you do? Now, it just went on and on and on. And we had this captive audience of experts that we could put on a webinar every afternoon. And you could opt in to whatever you needed based on our vast resources of relationships with experts. So we did two things. We created a daily newsletter, which doesn't sound like much, but we would provide an awful lot of links, every single one of those links needs to be checked to make sure they actually go to that website, getting all that content aggregated every morning, the newsletter went out at 2pm Every day. It had to be edited and it had to be assembled and laid out and sent out and people would send us their information every single day. So we were really fortunate and that not only did we have Stephanie from HBr we had Lisa BAINBRIDGE who had been a former editor of the Orlando Sentinel. Now Lisa comes alive when the deadlines put on her. It was just amazing thing to watch. And that comms team was putting on a newsletter every single day. And then at four o'clock we had a webinar every single day. So our whole days were go like crazy until two and four o'clock because we had a deadline to get all this stuff done. And so we did this for about 90 days. And I think I'm just starting to realize the effects of that. I think when it was happening, I felt alive. I was like, This is amazing that we're getting to play this role and do all these things. But I was working 18 hour days while I had a college student learning at home, a high school student learning at home. And I made sure that every day we had a hot lunch at one o'clock, because I wasn't even spending time with my children. I was just working all the time, from the front yard or the kitchen, which actually affected them, too. So it was a challenging time that at the moment that it was was happening, I didn't see it as something as hard as it actually was like we're in reflection. So we were able to occupy this place of helping people keep their restaurants going through curbside stations that we set up helping people do a whole Easter Passover curation of what's in their store that no one can get to how can we show you what's there so that we can they can walk it out to your car? And we can keep something going during all of this? How can we create virtual fashion shows for our Park Avenue retailers? How can we let people know what's happening with everybody. So we can try to get back to something that looks like operationally normal. So those were the key functions there. And I think our team just got better and better and better at being whatever this community needed. And we ended up commissioning a team of economists to understand what our economy was, what was the insult it had suffered, and helped us create a model for how to move out of that. And we actually led the economic recovery task force that made recommendations to our City Commission to try to help us move toward resiliency, and then create an awareness of what needs to be in place infrastructure wise, for if and when this happens again, when we ask roomfuls of people, how many of you think there'll be another pandemic in this lifetime? About 75% of them raise their hand.
Paul Twyford:I hope they're wrong. I think that you've shed light on how the chamber really, really rose to the occasion. During that time, that was difficult for all of us on just a variety of levels. And I think you should be very proud of your contribution and your staffs contribution to the community at large during that unbelievably difficult time. So kudos to you and your staff for that. You mentioned the three primary programs that the the chamber puts on so tell us about those three, and I think there's one that might be a little more near and dear to your heart. And I want to hear a lot about that
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, they're all near and dear to my one. heart. And I will tell you that leadership Winter Park was a particular conundrum because we did not want to put that program on Zoom. There's something so special that happens as our participants come in once a month for nine months beginning with a retreat. And you we there's just a magic that happens there. You've done it, you know, I can't even tell you what it is. But that sense of being part of that family of people that are all for one, one for all and we're all going to help each other be successful. That has to happen in a room, it can't happen on Zoom, with respect to zoom. But it it was a real challenge because the last thing we wanted to be is perceived as seeking an opportunity to keep our revenue streams going while somebody was creating a super spreader event that was not worth it to us. So we had to do these twin responsibilities all at once one was keep this program going while keeping everybody safe. And I'm telling you we were on those poor participants about masks more than I don't ever want to talk about a mask ever again. And I remember every single event Lisa coming to me and saying okay know what are we going to say from the podium about masks at this event and it would change it would it would go down? It would come back up? It would it was always what are we going to do about masks. So we actually held leadership on our park during COVID With everyone spaced way apart and without your mask dip below your mouth we're on you like on you right away and the RTR of leadership Winter Park team that year, and the participants did such a great job because we said to them, Look guys, this is the only way we can make this work. So we were thrilled to be able to keep leadership Winter Park going during that year. And I think that's yielded a an embedded sense of it. tennety with that program that served us really well during the recruitment process last year, we had more people apply than ever in the over 30 year history of this program. And we have a really invested community and leadership Winter Park. So I'm so proud of Amy and her team and and we had a consultant come in to help us with that that year, manette Marcial, who helped keep all the kind of the trains moving on leadership Winter Park, which is a place that equips advanced and emerging leaders to create solutions for our community, our region. So it's important that we continue that on ramp. And as we talked about exporting the special, what we want to tell people now is you don't have to have grown up in Winter Park to serve on the chamber board, you don't have to be an original gangster, right, we can create a pathway for you if you want, it's like the gym. If you want to go to the gym and do all the workouts and drink your protein shakes, then Betsy, maybe you'll be a size six one day, but if you want to do some of it, and not all of it, then maybe you won't, right. So the chamber is like that. And that when you want to put a lot into it, we're here to help you catalyze all of that and get a lot out of it. Leadership wonder park we see as the on ramp for Chamber Leadership and regional leadership. And so it plays a very important role as the farm team for new leaders in this community and the region. And we really didn't want to see that important work stop during COVID. So I'm so thrilled about that. Now, we did execute our youth leaders program on Zoom. And that's where I learned that high school students thought it was okay to get on camera shirtless and in their bedroom. So we had to have a word of prayer about what a professional attire looks like during that program. And that was really hard. You know, one of the things we noticed with when we finally brought our young students back in to a live setting a year later, there was a one dimensional imprint on them that you could tell they were so used to being talked at on Zoom. They weren't used to contributing to a live conversation. And I think we're seeing that receipt now, which is really important. I'm very concerned about what the long lasting effects of that are going to be for our young people. Because we absolutely saw it. When they came back the year later, I think we're getting back to something a little more normal now. But Angela, cats are did an incredible job of delivering that program. And we had to deliver it like we did once a month instead of the week. So our youth leaders program attracts students from 15 Regional High Schools, they come in for a whole week in the summer, and we couldn't put kids on Zoom for a week. So we did a once a month thing where they got to know we would, you know, bring people to them instead of them going out and experientially learning. That was very difficult. But again, we have more applications than we've ever had the the vitality of that program was maintained during COVID. And then the third program I'll discuss is our return to work program for women who've taken a career pause, usually to focus on their family, either an ailing parent or a child that they're raising. And we had been very successful launching this program in 2017, we won an international award for chamber innovation as a result of it. And to date, we've returned over 100 highly educated, professional, talented women back to the workforce, which is what our community needs, they need high quality talent at a price small business can afford. And that's why we started the program. Well, we had been really successful bringing women into the room we're sitting in, and really plucking at some of the most tender, insecure moments they have about the choices they've made and how scared they are to present themselves back to the workforce. And we we we say we measure our success and relaunch in tears. And we'd boy we'd cry in this room. And it was great. And I remember going to the board and saying we need to offer re launch on Zoom. And we don't think we can charge for it. And I remember a board member saying well, why wouldn't you charge for it? I said, because I have no idea if we're going to be able to meet a quality standard. So if I asked you to pay for this, and we don't need a quality standard, I'm going to feel really badly about that. And that will injure the integrity of the chamber. So is it okay, do it for free. So we had almost 30 Women on that Zoom. And we've actually pulled a lot of our own talent off the people that were on that call. So that was really, really helpful for us. But we learned how to do that program on Zoom. We learned that we push more of the learning to homework, and that we only do it we used to do it. It was a four hour class once a month. And we now do it a two hour class once a week for five weeks. And the homework plays a really big role in that. And the Facebook group plays a really big role in that. And what happened when we did that was our women became more connected to each other and more connected to a sense of community because we're delivering that virtual community experience and so we no longer offer relaunch live, because we also we got several key benefits from it, not least of which is our participants learn how to present themselves on Zoom, they learn how to shoot a video of themselves on their phone and contribute it to the Facebook group, which is how many of them are going to be interviewed for the first time. So we want them to experience that. We also loved that we got people from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and North Carolina, to say nothing of all over Florida participating in this program. So that was a really neat benefit as well. But we people ask us all the time, when are you turning relaunch back to live? Never, because we get a better result doing it this way?
Paul Twyford:That's exciting. Yeah. And it's a really cool program. And I think one of the many, many ways that the Chamber has kind of reinvented itself, because that I don't think was ever part of what chambers did 20 years ago or 30.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:They do they do workforce development, right. So why don't we started talking about this, that's one of the key things chambers do. But in a setting like Mississippi, what happens is they'll want to do some economic development work where Verizon wants to put a regional call center in a rural Mississippi town. Well, Verizon needs to know that there's going to be a workforce ready to do that work. So they'll partner with community colleges, get people trained on the things Verizon is going to need in order to make that a success. So the chamber will be part of both of those functions, the economic development of bringing some regional influencer in there that creates jobs and economic vitality partner with making sure that workforce is ready. Now the Orlando Economic Partnership does that we don't really have the real estate to bring in a game changing participant like that. What we have is a very cool community of a lot of small businesses that need highly educated professional talent. And so our workforce program is tailored to the needs of this community, because we're not going to see a dynamic like that happen. So that's kind of why we tailored it to what Winter Park needs.
Paul Twyford:Yeah, yeah. And and it's been a very, very successful program, as you pointed out. So as we celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the chamber, and we look forward to the next 100 years, you had commissioned I believe it was a year ago. Now the prosperity scorecard to look at how we as a community can do better, right, we can always look to improve. Right, so tell us about the prosperity scorecard.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:So the prosperity scorecard really, the idea kind of emerged from the work we did on economic recovery. We now know that Winter Park is an over $4 billion a year economy, which was shocking to me, because I asked people, How big do you think when a parks economy is built to be like, Oh, 800 million, I'm like, oh, it's way, way bigger than that. And the interesting thing is we're punching above our weight. In categories like financial services, we've got a lot of institutional investing going on here. And we have higher education in the form of orange Technical College, Valencia and Rollins to say nothing of UCF's influence, right. So Full Sail influence, these are all Full Sail as a Winter Park address. And so we have a lot of this influence going on here. We have huge healthcare infrastructure. Here, we have our own hospital, and all the attendant professional services that go there. We have two major league law firms, right in the central business district, and a lot of really recognizable law firms like Gillette Schwartz and Associates that's known regionally for what they do in labor and employment law. There's a lot of that here. And so we now know what we're dealing with. And so we thought, can we become a better version of ourselves? And if so, how would how would we do that? How would we measure progress toward a more prosperous Winter Park? And one of the things that the COVID experience informed us was that the minute we moved to online learning for students, I thought, Oh, my God, what if they don't have access to Wi Fi or a device. And that was actually the case for many students who attend schools in Winter Park, and that, to me, felt anti democratic. It felt that we create a system of some people who could win and some people who could get left behind. And the people I know when Winter Park don't want Winter Park to look or behave like that. We certainly don't want to see that happen. And in our next 100 years, we want to make sure that anyone who wants to contribute and be part of the success and prosperity here can do that. And we don't want prosperity to only be available to a certain cohort of people. We want people to join in the fun of how successful Winter Park is. And you know, the reality of Winter Park is that it was planted as a tale of Two cities. And I think there's an awful lot of healing that still needs to go on around that. The fact that the train track was itself, a bifurcating spine that said, white people live here and black people live here, we're trying to do something that goes beyond geography, again, and attract persons of color, who are business leaders who want to get things done. And Winter Park, you don't need to live here, you don't even have your office here. Right now, we're supporting vendors of color who are bidding on city contracts. And that's really fun. We want to be able to be on par with what the Hispanic and African American chambers are doing to support businesses that are owned by persons of color. And that's, that's what makes this a better place. It also aligns with the values of our big institutions like Rollins, adventhealth, Orlando Health, etc. So we know that we're adding value to our stakeholders by focusing on that we also know that as we emerge from COVID, there had been two tracks here, maybe more, but we wanted to acknowledge that they were two tracks of participation. And we wanted to be aware of how we might add value for the people that were on a on a track that was outside of the prosperity model. So we started looking at things like housing, poverty, food insecurity, all things that we became aware of during COVID, in the partnership that we have with army of angels, who was providing food devices, transportation, all kinds of wraparound needs, to students at Winter Park and Glenridge. And I was surprised to learn how many of those students had serious food insecurity and needs that would go with a set of circumstances like that. So when we went out to ask our community, what do you think prosperity is they told us and it was really cool, because people said, well, we don't want there to be people in poverty in this community, we want to measure getting rid of poverty, good news, I don't have to go to Puerto Prince Haiti to reach people who have serious needs, I can walk down the street and address them. So very convenient if you're humanitarian, but we've got to do better for those populations. So we went out and surveyed people. And we actually am very proud of the fact that our survey pool mirrored the exact demography of Winter Park. So we have 77%, white population in Winter Park, we had 77%, white respondents in our survey, and we saw a spectrum of ethnicities ages in our response, we want to make sure we weren't going to the usual, everybody who looks like Betsy responded to this thing. That's not what happened. So we're thrilled with that. And they said, you know, we're really concerned about the environment. We're really concerned about housing, we're concerned about transportation we're concerned about. Our employers are concerned about how hard it is to hire people. And that is an ongoing problem. So if we've got a community with both poverty and open jobs, how what role can the chamber play in marrying all that? What can we do to bind all that up? So that we're creating solutions that go with the problems? One of I think the most alarming and things to emerge from this work was that four out of 10 students who attend to winter parks school qualify for free and reduced lunch? Now, there have been some interesting comments about that. I've had people say to me, Oh, well, that's a federal measure, well, oh, they're not? Are they taking the lunch and like, oh, wow, we don't understand what this is. It's a federal measure of poverty, that means your family has enough people in it, and too little money for you to even survive, right. And that's four out of 10 students who attend a Winter Park School qualify for that. That's an unacceptable level of poverty in a community where we enjoy so much prosperity. And that's one of the things that the chamber is now focused on democratization of opportunity, because we believe when everybody succeeds, everybody succeeds. Right? And we want to make sure that we're building platforms of inclusivity. We're also you know, now measuring what the city's doing with respect to sustainability, because that's an 800 pound gorilla with respect to purchasing power, right. So we're measuring on sustainability. How many city vehicles in the fleet are electric powered? How many solar permits? Are we issuing? are we incentivizing people to put solar on their homes and businesses? You know, what are we doing to make sure that our wholesale power mix? What percentage of it is renewable right now 20% of it is renewable. How can we get to a greater percentage of that so we feel better about our carbon footprint as a city? And then, you know, moving forward? Can we create incentive packages that give developers credits for putting electric charging vehicles and commercial properties several years ago, we had a very well intentioned effort on the part of the City Commission to mandate EV charging stations per whatever 1000 feet of commercial square footage was going in? Well, that's well intentioned, and we like it. In theory, businesses do not like mandates. I don't think anybody does, really. So we're trying to come up with more carrot than stick models with respect to that, we want to see more level three charging stations in this community, because that's when people really start buying electric vehicles and thinking differently about sustainable practices. If the infrastructure isn't here, you're not going to get the uptake. So we want to partner with the city on incentivizing the creation of that, and making it more attractive for builders and developers to put them all around the city. Rather than telling them you have to do this, we want to give them an incentive to do that. So those are some of the areas we're working on. With respect to the prosperity scorecard Saturday was the anniversary of our data collection. And I think we're gonna see some of the same surprising things that we saw when we created it, which means I think we still have 10 industries with 100, or more open jobs in this community, it's important to remember that we have 6000 More jobs here than we have residents to do them. That's a lot. And people complain at every single municipal election, their top gripe in this community is traffic. So that's not going to change as long as 6000 people are net commuting into Winter Park every single day. So we actually have to think about what we want to do about that as a city. And we need to be strategic about that instead of reacting to it. So if traffic truly is our number one complaint, what do we want to do about it, because we actually have to affect it at its core, and not just build a turn lane on Fairbanks, right? That's a nice start. But we need to be thinking about things holistically. And that's what the scorecard is trying to do is help us think about our city as a whole. And certainly, we don't have a walled city. So we've got to think about the pressures that are on us, all around us from one of the most spectacular regions of growth in the entire world, really. And so what's that reality? And how do we plan strategically to work around that? Well, we maintain the integrity and the quality of life that we enjoy here.
Paul Twyford:Yeah, yeah. And so is the plan to continue the prosperity scorecard into the future and and continue to measure those things and see how we're as a community doing to impact those things in a positive way?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Yes, the goal is to move the city from reacting to things to pro acting, right? And so how do we set a vision for our city that we want to be better at x by x, right? That's actually management by objective. That's how we all run our businesses. We'd like to see the city move toward that operating model. So we felt well, we can't ask them to do that without furnishing data to help them measure things. And what gets measured gets done. Right. So now we're creating a measurement instrument. And actually, anybody can have it. You could have it as if you want to contextualize what it's like to live in Winter Park on your website. I don't know why you would, because you're selling booze. But if you were a law firm that wanted to attract people here for real estate deals, you could put our scorecard link on your website, it's our gift. I want to thank the Edith Bush charitable foundation for underwriting the initial investment in that, and Rollins College for sponsoring it so that we can create it as a gift to the city. Anyone can use those data, realtors, anyone that wants it. So it's it's a tool that's going to enable us to measure are we better at this than we were last year? Are we worse, or were worse? Okay, so what do we want to do about that, and this is no longer Betsy thinks this. And somebody else thinks that this is just an objective data set of data, where we can say this is trending in a way that we're not okay with. And we're going to use now quantifiable data to try to help us get better at the areas in which we can improve.
Paul Twyford:Right. And I think that's super exciting for the future of our community. So tell us a little bit about the programming that we have to celebrate the 100 years, what are we doing to commemorate this?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, right now, as we sit here, it's April 6, you have 24 more days to experience. The fun 100 exhibition, which is a seven garden zone exhibition of public art created through 400 volunteers labor, and the participation of art departments at 12 schools ranging from preschool all the way up to collegiate fun. 100 is the story of winter parks economic development, and we're grateful to the History Museum and association for helping us curate elements of that. And so it's at Mead garden, which we think is one of The jewels of Winter Park and we wanted to make sure that we elevated people's awareness of Mead garden and how special it is. So we partnered with them to really be a force multiplier for meat garden and to attract resources there. And we want people to experience the natural environment, which was the original economic developer Winter Park. So how beautiful Winter Park is, is the reason why rich people from the north wanted to come here and settle and develop. So Mead garden is the stage for that we focus on the logging industry, the citrus industry, the role of the railroad, certainly the knowledge economy that we have here. And then our emphasis on art and culture that makes winter parks so unique and recognizable. So those elements go through everything that's in the exhibition, it's seven zones that you can go through it may garden, if you wanted to be quick about it, you could probably go through it in about 30 minutes. If you want to spend the day, there's plenty of opportunities for you to do that as well. We have an app you can scan when you get there and do a guided audio tour with yours truly narrating the elements of the exhibition. And we were able to do this sustainably through the use of found objects. So basically, things that would have gone into the landfill have now been repurposed as art thanks to the vision of our production design team, which is a company called AOA that does themed entertainment contracting throughout the world, including Disney and universal. And they conceived of this for us, our volunteers, including the TEKS at Rollins came out in full force to help us build this on a day of service on January 21. And then we have art departments from the First United Methodist preschool on up to Valencia and full sail, creating sculptures of animals there and various elements that have made it an engaging, sustainable and inclusive way to celebrate our 100th anniversary on the bridge and the back of Mead garden. And if you're not familiar with meat garden, all you have to do is show up and there's maps guiding you through how to do that. In the bridge in the back, there's a series of panels that actually narrate the key moments in Winter Parks business community's history. And that's a guide there for people to kind of read about more of that and learn more about how that works. We're really grateful to Full Sail University for presenting the entire exhibition, and to our key garden zone sponsors which Orlando health adventhealth The gardens at DePugh waste pro Massey services, and cypress Bank and Trust for helping us execute this and making sure that it's inclusive and free of charge. And we're working right now with Orange County public schools to make sure that students that title one schools can come and visit it on field trips. And we want to make sure that this is accessible to everyone through the region, whether they are visitors or residents.
Paul Twyford:What a fitting tribute to the 100 year anniversary that is so as part of that exhibit, there are these like statue 100 things, and we call them icons, okay, icons, they will go with that. And those are going to live there until the end of this month. And then they're going to go where back to
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:their owners. So they're about I would call them three and a half feet tall, maybe four feet tall hundreds. And they all have the same plinth on which they sit, which has our logo, our centennial logo, and it says celebrating 100 years of economic vitality. And then each of the sponsors of those icons had the opportunity to imagine their brand on those 100 So I would check it out at me gardens really cool. We're announcing the winner of the most creative 100 at goodmorning Winter Park, which will take place next week. And we have a prize for that. But they're they've been really imaginatively conceived and the assemblage of all of them together together. There's about 40 of them. And they're You're welcome on intimate garden when you drive in. It's it's really cool because I think it shows the depth and breadth of our business community and their investment in our prosperity and our sense of self as a community. They're just cool. And so for example, Rollins has one with the varsity are all over it, that will go back to Rollins, the glass knife as a really cool one they can keep outside the glass knife when you walk in for the next the balance of the year. Basically we've got eight months left and they can display those there. But we wanted people to know who our kind of key stakeholders were who was really invested in this celebration. And that was a way for us to go beyond heavy duty sponsorship to let people feel a part of what we're doing and we want the community to be aware that we're in the middle of this celebration. That was another way to let People know about that after the exhibition ends.
Paul Twyford:Yeah. And that's, I think you're right, they are cool. And I'm personally looking forward to seeing them out in our community at the places of business that helped support all of this, I think it's going to be a really interesting thing as we see these kind of pop up, you know, all over the community. So you know, one of the things that has historically been sort of a challenge, or maybe even a rub is that you've got his the Historical Association and people who want to keep the charm and community that that we have here in Winter Park. And we also want economic vitality, and we want growth and development. And sometimes people think that those are at odds with one another. And I'll give you a quick example. So back in the 60s, my mom worked at a florist on Park Avenue. And the buzz back then, that people were wringing their hands over and really concerned about was, oh, my gosh, they're going to build this Winter Park Mall, and nobody's going to come to Park Avenue anymore. And, of course, that is laughable today, right? Because a people continued to come to Park Avenue as they have for 100 years or more. And B, the Winter Park Mall has itself been torn down and replaced by the Winter Park village, which is now reinventing itself. So. But it's an example of fear of development and fear of change. Right. And so talk a little bit about how we as a community can balance the charm and history of our community with looking towards the future and that economic vitality.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Yeah, I think fear and vision are sometimes at odds in the community, when you have a lack of vision. That's the vacuum into which fear pours. And that can be the controlling narrative. A great example, is in 2008, when we took the very bold step to buy our electric power infrastructure from progress energy. And I remember help being one of the leaders of the grassroots campaign to do that. At that time, if you lived in Winter Park like I did, you're used to your VCR blinking 12 all the time. Because there was a brownout or blackout almost every day in the summer when there was one of these violent rainstorms. Yeah, so we had no undergrounding of cable, we had our wires, and we had very unreliable service, and almost a sense of like, let them eat cake. You send us our your utility payment every month. And we'll maybe we'll every now and then check in on reliability, but we're not that focused on it. Because you guys are kind of small potatoes in our network. So there was a sense of how do we get greater accountability? How do we get a sense of, of being able to long term improve this system? Well, the answer, of course, is own it. And so when we were going door to door campaigning for this, people would slam the door in my face saying you don't understand, when there's a hurricane coming, we're going to be left by ourselves here. Well, if you understand how these things work, every municipality or county, who operates a utility system has what's called an interlocal agreement. So they have an agreement with another utility company up in West Virginia. And we've seen all the bucket trucks come down when the storm comes. And when it's West Virginia's turn, we go up there, right. So that's how it all works. And I think there was such a raging fear that we would be moored on an island all by ourselves when the chips were down. And that was a narrative that gained a lot of legs. When in fact, what we've been able to do is keep rates low underground, improve reliability immeasurably, and more importantly, control our destiny as we go into the future of electric utility operations, which includes being able to choose how much we want to buy sustainable wholesale power. These are all enormous wins for Winter Park, but that fear narrative, boy did it take hold, right. So I think when we talk about change that automatically makes people nervous. But we have to think about the role of small business adding to that charm. I think we saw it during COVID Park Avenue was a ghost town. That's not very appealing. And if we fail to maintain the attractiveness of this destination for disposable time and money, that thing that special will no longer be special. And growing up here I told you how special it felt. Well, now I have to tell you, winter garden is special. Lake Nona is special. DeLand is special mount Dora is special, they figured out the secret sauce, and they're doing things to keep and make their destinations more special all the time. Now, if we don't keep up with that, Park Avenue won't feel as special. And there was a time when it was the only game in town. And the Chamber's focus is making sure that the entire destination is attractive. That means orange Avenue Winter Park village, Hannibal Square Park Avenue, the gestalt of that is valuable and meaningful, and creates connective tissue between potential customers and patrons of our artistic organizations that want to come here and continually lift that up and keep our property values high. And our values high on Park Avenue. So that's important right now, only 20% of our taxable real estate is commercial. That also means that when we hit the recession skids, or there's some other insult to our financial picture as a city, the residents are going to be stuck with the bill for that. A lot of cities like to see that base grow higher on the commercial side, so that it's spread out to businesses to help carry that burden during a tough time. I think there's a perception that we're insulated from tough times. And I think COVID showed us that we're not we can be like everybody else. In the pandemic, that's the pan part of that war word. It means everywhere, always all of us, right. And so we're not special when it comes to our risk, and our potential to be injured by something like COVID. So we have to be creating these strategic models to balance and I grew up here, I do not want to see six storey condos, any part of this community, or the canonization of you know, Park Avenue or 17-92, even which is a state highway. But I think it's important that we maintain the integrity of what makes us special, while we try to seek strategic opportunities to grow and access things that are going to make our community more competitive and financially secure in the future.
Paul Twyford:Absolutely. Absolutely. So the will end on a yet another anniversary coming up. So the autumn art festival is turning 50. So tell us about the autumn art festival, what makes it so special. And, you know, kind of, you know, the 50 years of celebrating that?
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Well, one of the things that we've kind of settled into over the past four years is a leadership role when it comes to arts advocacy for the business benefits of it, you know, because you're part of this effort, we've been going to Tallahassee and advocating for a restitution of arts grant matching dollars that the legislature used to appropriate at the rate of $65 million a year that dipped to $2.4 million back in 2018. And we've been working with the legislature to get that number back up and, and lift us out of that 48 out of 50 states position we are in. So the chamber completely celebrates and wants to make sure that we've created an advocacy role for our arts organizations. It's part of the fabric of what makes Winter Park so special. It's part of what people over and over say, is a value for their winter park experience. And so we want to take that role in identifying how art is good business. And we've gotten more intentional about that with respect to the production of the autumn Art Festival. The 50th year is a key milestone because we of course have the Spring Festival which we're never going to try to compete with or emulate. We want to lift that festival and one of the ways we've done that is to host a gallery here at the Welcome Center if you haven't been we want people to come see some of the best in show works from the Spring Festival over the years to raise awareness of the Spring Festival. It's very important that people are aware of that because that is an internationally recognized festival. We do something a little different in the autumn art festival and we celebrate local talent. It you have to be a Florida based artists to get into that show. And we love that it's got that unique and identifiable brand that is different from what you see in the spring. Now there's some overlap. We love seeing artists that are in both shows. That's fantastic. But we really like adding value Due to the engine of opportunity for artists regionally and throughout Florida, and we know that having that festival attracts people to the destination, maybe for the first time who were going to come back and eat at blue on the avenue or bovine and want to join McMahon's restaurants, we love that. Right? Be aware of Rollins College, be aware of what's going on in the destination. We also know that's a big lift for our restaurants and retailers that weekend. But we know that it adds value for our residents as well feeling a sense of pride in the art that's available to them that's just walkable to their home. Right. And so, that is something we're very, very proud of. And we've gotten even more intentional about how we support that work. And we love that it's it's regionally focused.
Paul Twyford:So what an exciting time as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the autumn Art Festival, the 100th anniversary of I look
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:pretty good for
Paul Twyford:you do. You absolutely do. So. Thank you so much for joining us on our podcast and we as the winner Park Historical Association, wish you and the chamber the very best in the next 100 years.
Betsy Gardner Eckbert:Thank you so much.