Got a great idea? Or a great sandwich?
Get it to market. Get it in front of eyes and hands and wallets. And make it new and exciting.
Step through the double doors at 1 S. Division St. in Peekskill into the offices of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce and you’ll discover a chamber executive director with this marketing mindset ”“ honed, not surprisingly, by 25 years in marketing.
Deborah Milone is not yet a year at the helm of the chamber, representing 374 businesses. If they were expecting the status quo, they expected wrong. She’s challenging chamber members to put forward their best “goods, services, demonstrations, home improvements, art, workshops, technology, culinary crafts, healthful tips” and more in the Hudson Valley Gateway Experience, a kind of regional fare for business exposure with a consumer angle.
It’s part of an overarching effort to unify a far-flung geography of businesses in burgs such as Croton-on-Hudson, Putnam Valley and Montrose. “How do you tie together Cortlandt Manor and Buchanan and Verplanck?” she asks.
It’s not a rhetorical question with Milone: “I’m going to force the issue.”
She’s also determined to promote what already works ”“ notably downtown fairs and festivals that are the backbones of many business districts. “Administrative, promotion, backroom support ”“ they’ll get it all.” Her business career was with Peekskill-based Guide Communications Inc.; her chamber background, including as member of the board of directors, was with the former Cortlandt-Peekskill Chamber of Commerce. Gateway dates to 2004.
“Most people think of a chamber as B to B ”“ and they do a wonderful job of this. We do it, too. But we do not continually need to reinvent the B to B wheel. With the Gateway experience, we want to introduce the community to these businesses. We’re saying to the public with this event, ‘Come, let us show you what we’ve got.’ I think that if anything there is sometimes a disconnect between how business people think and marketing. Businesses need to think more like consumers and that means telling people what you do.”
The event is Saturday, March 19, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at The Mansion on the Hill at Colonial Terrace Conference Center, 119 Oregon Road, Cortlandt Manor. Milone’s pitch on the glossy event flier would have to be called straightforward: “You have to be there!” She’s conscripted a number of heavy hitters as event cosponsors, including Entergy, Kuttergroup, Hudson Valley Hospital Center, Wheelabrator Westchester and D. Bertoline & Sons.
The chamber’s annual budget is $400,000. The full-time staff includes Milone and administrative coordinator Marissa Cunningham. The office itself includes the wall-mounted chamber logo designed by Phil Brandon, principal of 10-year chamber member Brandstorms L.L.C. He has worked on PR and marketing activities for “years” with Milone and said of the chamber: “It offers an immersion into the fabric of community life, both as a resident and as a business person.”
Milone said the chamber also offers entrée to the likes of Brandon, who quotes Shakespeare and cautions with a laugh not to spell his business name “bran storm ”“ that”™s a different thing altogether ”“ and not good.”
“He”™s so clever, so talented,” Milone said of Brandon. “I met him through the chamber and this is one of the great things we can offer: the insights and talents of our members.”
March 4 will feature another First Friday event in Peekskill, part of an arts renaissance focused on the Paramount Center for the Performing Arts, which last year attracted some 63,000 patrons ”“ its third year in a row above 60,000 ”“ and which has spawned a secondary restaurant-entertainment boom akin to its cousin to the south, the Tarrytown Music Hall.
The chamber”™s activities take place against a backdrop of civic improvements in the chamber’s population epicenter ”“ Peekskill. There, economic development specialist Christopher Marra cited three major initiatives with potential to revitalize the economy.
“The city is working on two waterfront projects to improve amenities and make the waterfront more attractive to business,” Marra said, citing a 2.5-mile waterfront walkway, a new 4.4-acre park called Peekskill Landing being developed in conjunction with Scenic Hudson and the city”™s Lincoln Depot and Visitors Center north of the train station. All involve public funding.
“Part of the overall plan is to spur residential and commercial development along the waterfront,” Marra said. “People can come to these places and perhaps eat in a restaurant or shop. For those living there, the advantage would be having a waterfront park and walkway on the river ”“ those are pretty nice amenities to have.” Notably so given the neighborhood was for decades dominated by coal-fired plants working in iron.
Industry had dominated the regional waterfront via manufacturing the likes of stoves and flour. “Now that”™s giving over in the last two decades to light manufacturing” ”“ machine parts, linens ”“ “but you”™re still within the city limits,” Marra said.
History has not been overlooked. By April, Peekskill will have in place a cultural tourism plan. “We have a lot of sites and that we see primarily for day-trippers,” Marra said.
For overnighters, the city now boasts the Inn on the Hudson, which Marra said invested $1 million in itself in the last year. “That”™s so important,” he said. “If you can get a person to stay overnight, it opens up so many more opportunities. When they go to breakfast, there”™s the possibility they will stop in a store ”¦ It gives them more time and ”“ even if they move on ”“ we”™ve given them a reason to come back.”
