Q & A with Jan Vance

            Jan Vance has been executive director of the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce since 2006. A mother of three, Vance - a Ballard native -- worked in a bank and as a preschool teacher before taking a part-time position with the Edmonds Chamber in 1994. After a two-year hiatus, Vance returned to the Chamber in 1999.

            Patch sat down with Vance on a recent morning to talk about the state of the 400-member Chamber.

Q: What are the goals or objectives of the Chamber for 2011?

A: This year we have a new committee that's called the Community Awareness and Engagement Committee, to help the Chamber of Commerce get a better reputation and stronger voice in front of the city and the City Council. And also to help educate the community and businesses on political-type issues that are happening. Another goal is to reach out more with our PR and Marketing Committee. And also our goal always is to obtain more members. The more members we have, the stronger we can be, and the more we can do for them.

Q: You say you want a better reputation. Do you have a bad reputation now?

A: No, we don't have a bad reputation now, at all. But it's not as strong as it could be. We have some very vocal citizen groups here. I don't know that they're against the Chamber so much. They're pretty much against any change, I guess would be a good way to put it.

Q: How does the Chamber work with the Downtown Edmonds Merchants Association?

A: They're not truly an association, because they're a committee of the Chamber of Commerce. That group right now is in the process of trying to form a business improvement district. They need 60 percent approval, by whatever method they use -- number of businesses, or the total square footage involved -- to have it approved by the City Council.

Q: What are the advantages of a business improvement district?

A: A business improvement district is a tax to all the businesses. You can either tax the business owners or the property owners, and then you have to figure out how you're going to do it - by value, or by square footage. So how they're doing it right now is by business owners, not by property owners. They're doing it by square footage, and the most anybody would pay would be $600 a year. Obviously if you have less square footage, you're going to pay less. And they have a rates scaled so that if you're a retailer you pay less than a service business. Once it's approved by City Council, the city's responsibility at that point is to send out the invoices for that tax. It doesn't go the city, and the city doesn't get to decide where it goes, it just collects it.

Q: And they'll use the money for...?

A: What they've chosen to have it for mainly is marketing the downtown, as a shopping area and a place to come. They'll probably use some of it for some events they'll put on. Actually, the Chamber puts on a ton of events already, but they may add to some of them themselves.

Q: About many businesses would be in the improvement district?

A: I would say 350, maybe.

Q: How many businesses are there in Edmonds?

A: I don't know the exact number. I know there's about 2,000 business licenses in the city right now, but, you have to consider there's a lot of home businesses that probably do not have licenses. Edmonds is a lot larger than people think. We have downtown, the waterfront, Highway 99, Westgate, Five Corners, Firdale Village, and then there's also Perrinville.

Q: Is it challenging as a chamber to represent so many different sectors?

A: Absolutely. Most of our things, fortunately or unfortunately, take place in downtown, and we kind of focus on downtown. So what we're trying to do in these other areas is a couple of things. Our Community Awareness Committee is trying to help them with political things, which gets us involved....you might be able to have larger buildings in Highway 99 than you'd want down here, and you know, those kinds of things. And also we may go to those areas and see if they want to do some marketing on their own, to help their little group. We don't have as many members from those areas, so we want to do more outreach. But sometimes it can be a challenge because we're down here and most of the focus is down here. And Edmonds is pretty unique in that we have a city center here, naturally, and most places do not. They have to make theirs.

Q: What challenges are involved in working with the City Council to achieve your goals?

A:  City and city councils in small communities can always be a challenge, because everybody has different opinions. We have a contingency of people, and it's actually a small group-- but a very loud group -- that don't want change of any kind. Obviously, the businesses do want some change. I mean, we want it to grow, economically, and be viable, not just now, but in the future. That's kind of the biggest challenge.

Q: How do you envision that growth?

A: I think that if they had some regulations on making it more friendly to have a business here, going through the process. I don't know that there's any incentives here at all, like some cities that are trying to attract businesses.

Q: Like tax incentives?

A: Yeah. That's part of it. Also some of the buildings here are older, and so you have the remodel versus "tear it down and build something new" kind of thing. And the height restrictions here are 25 feet, so we have a lot of developers....It's hard for me to get into this because I can't have the opinion that the Chamber wants these big huge tall buildings. People think we do but we do not. But then we also have developers looking at sites and saying "we can't do this if we can't make it three stories. You're only giving us two stories and that doesn't pencil out." So that's kind of the push and pull here.

Q: What's the Chamber's role with 425 Launch?

A: That comes out of our Economic Development Committee, and 425 Launch is basically a group of entrepreneurs discussing, with themselves, what works, what doesn't work, what things they might need. It's kind of like an incubator.

Q: What are you most excited about in terms of the Chamber?

A: I have a real passion for the Chamber, and I always have, so I'm kind of excited about stuff that we just do. The Chamber puts on the Fourth of July festivities -- the fireworks, the parade. We put on the Taste of Edmonds, which is actually our fundraiser. We do a classic car show. We do Halloween. Merchants and businesses hand out candy. It is crazy down here! And we do tree lighting, which we just did.

Then the other portion of our Chamber is economic development, advocacy. We work for our members, so we have a Membership Committee, an Ambassador Committee, an Economic Development Committee....We do a lot of things in our chamber. We're very active. A lot of chambers do this one portion over here, with economic advisory stuff...but we're kind of different in that we do this as well, which is kind of a lot.

Q: Do you have a specific goal for how many members you'd like to have?

A: I'd love to have like, 600. That would be great! We may or may not get all of them, but I'm hoping that by working through some of this process, especially with the Community Action Committee, that we will get ourselves out there more, and people will know more about us.

Q: How much does it cost to join the Chamber?

A: For biz's that have zero to five employees it's $215 for a year. For bigger ones, usually with 41-plus employees, it's like $450. We're usually in zero to five range, because that's what most of the businesses here are. We don't have a Boeing or anything like that.