McEntire and Barnfather to Speak at Chamber of Commerce

At tomorrow's Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon, the guests will be Jim McEntire and Linda Barnfather.  They're both running for the Clallam County Commission seat being vacated by Steve Tharinger.

Wild Olympics Discussion at PABA meeting

The guest speaker at this Tuesday's Port Angeles Business Association meeting will be Carol Johnson, executive director of the North Olympic Timber Action Committee.  She will be presenting the timber industry's alternative to the Wild Olympics campaign.

The Wild Olympics campaign aims to add 38,000 acres to Olympic National Park, which would be achieved through voluntary sales by willing landowners.

Last June Carol Johnson told the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce that the loss of these 38,000 acres would eliminate between 112 and 226 jobs, and cause local governments to lose up to $4 million in tax revenue.

Chamber of Commerce Saves Dungeness Crab Festival

The Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival almost went under last month. The organization that produces the annual event — Olympic Peninsula Community Celebrations — voted to disband itself.

But now a new nonprofit organization, Olympic Peninsula Celebrations, has formed. This group, in partnership with the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce, will be producing the Crab and Seafood Festival. It’ll be held October 10th and 11th this year at City Pier, Hollywood Beach and the Red Lion parking lot. This year the festival might also use the Gateway pavilion and/or close off one block of Lincoln Street between Front Street and Railroad Avenue.

The Chamber’s board of directors voted last week to help with the management and production of the annual festival.

Award for Owners of Landing Mall

The Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce welcomed its new president for 2009, Betsy Reed Schultz.

The Chamber also presented an award to the owners of Landing Mall. Let’s see now — purchase a mall that’s already been a fixture for 25 years, and then jack the rents way way up (during an economic downturn) so that some of the existing businesses are forced to either close or relocate. OK, I guess that’s a good thing.

Maybe it’s a brilliant long-term business strategy and we just haven’t seen the positive results yet.

Aggravating the Recession by reporting on it

Do you think the recession and the housing slump have become even worse because the media has talked about them? The president of the North Peninsula Building Association made this complaint at the Monday Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

The PDN’s headline on Monday was about the housing crisis and recent layoffs at local mills, and Kevin Russell showed the group a copy of the PDN, saying “Why do we let the media drive our lives?”

This has been a long-running complaint, that when the media reports on a recession, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some downtown Port Angeles merchants are making a similar complaint: the PDN is driving away customers with their constant reporting on downtown construction projects and traffic jams.

It’s sort of an awkward situation; the media can't exactly stay hush-hush about economic news. And yet it does seem like the more news there is about the recession, the less people spend, and the cycle reinforces itself.