Taking the most prime location left in downtown and turning it from a viable gallery and retail space into a spot for the Chamber of Commerce to house themselves has more than just those in the shadows riled up.
There has been talk for years of getting the Visitors Center away from the upper Grand Ave. location of the chamber and housing that information in kiosks downtown.
Spread it out a bit and put the whole thing in locations that aren't going to charge us $70,000 a year, are maintained by volunteers and the businesses who advertise in them and all in high visible locale where people can actually find our Visitors Center.
There has never been any real talk of bringing the chamber downtown. With the overall lukewarm relationship the chamber has always had with downtown merchants, the idea is not a hot one all of a sudden.
If the idea does fly, then the chamber needs to not take up viable retail space and instead lodge themselves somewhere that suits what they are. A business environment. Not a sales environment.
Again, a thank you to Cynthia for not only speaking up but doing so honestly and bluntly enough so that her voice gets heard above the corporate stranglehold:
"This letter is in regard to the Post Independent article of Oct. 20 about the chamber negotiating to move into the new CMC building.
I am all for our chamber having a presence downtown, but not at the expense of the CMC Gallery. There was to be a gallery in the new building, a rather nice one, but in these days of “corporate greed rules,” CMC has decided to rent that space to the Glenwood Springs Chamber Resort Association.
Where would the gallery go? Maybe in the library in 2013 or 2014? If they build it and there is room.
There is a perfectly good space that CMC is vacating where the present gallery would make a wonderful chamber kiosk. The space is very visible downtown, right on the corner of Ninth and Grand where all of the tourists could see the chamber literature through that huge glass window.
Why sell that building and then take space away from the gallery to squeeze another business in, and then try to figure out where to put the gallery? It just doesn't make sense.
What is it that they are not telling us? Are they really planning to make this permanent? Why else would they rent the space out that they have already earmarked for the gallery?..."
(Cynthia Thomas)
(Read the entire letter? Click title and comment to start discussion)
"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
