By Brian Buethe, President | CEO, Grimes Chamber & Economic Development
July Newsletter Article
As a Chamber of Commerce, it is hard to pen an article that fails to address the very tiresome elephant in the room. COVID-19 has been a gut punch to the world. In the worst cases, lives and livelihoods have been lost. The threat that comes with a pandemic of this magnitude required, and still requires, good people to come together to help mitigate the negative impacts to our community and our world.
However, the sun has come up every day since we first learned of the virus and, even when it seemed most bleak, our community rallied. A community is defined by its people. Because many in our community went out of their way to support local businesses, most of them are still around today. The story is still being written and the future for some businesses is still uncertain. What happens when government funding assistance subsides? At the end of the day, in business, income needs to exceed expenses, otherwise those businesses do not survive.
We share the stories of our members with our elected officials, so that government policy can be crafted to do the most good. But there are things that we can do as individual citizens and business owners in lieu of waiting on whatever government has to offer in the future. It is not difficult, and it is not a new concept. Grimes stepped up to the plate and supported our local businesses like we had not before witnessed over the past few months. We “shopped local”! It is something to be proud of, because, but for that effort, we would have fewer local options and more of our neighbors would be in the unemployment line. Kudos to everyone who made the conscious effort to support area businesses.
Industries notice communities that have momentum. The growth of our community is something that we speak about with pride, because that growth is happening for incredibly good reasons. Grimes is not perfect, but there is a lot of good in this town. Investors notice communities that support their own. Communities with that type of reputation attract interest. These are a couple of the reasons that you see so much new development occurring in Grimes even during the headwinds that we have experienced this year.
It is estimated that Grimes has a population of roughly 15,000 people. We encourage you to patronize those businesses that are investing in your back yard. Who are they? A good place to learn about some great local options is www.GrimesIowa.com, which is our website. There, you can find the most updated list of your local Chamber members; a list that like our community, grows every year. We know most of them personally and we cherish the opportunity to help connect them to people and other businesses right here in Grimes.
By making smart choices, our wonderful community can and will continue to improve. #LoveGrimes