It has been my absolute privilege and pleasure to serve as the Chairman of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce for the past two years and I appreciate hearing from all of you. When I see you at meetings or events, it is gratifying to hear from so many of you the stories that you relay to me about the work that our Chamber staff has done to assist you in your business. The Chamber of Commerce plays many roles, one of the most important is to help you connect with other companies that may be able to do business with you and I am pleased to say that our membership concierge, Gabriella Marques, has been successful connecting hundreds of you this past year. If you have not yet made an appointment with her, I strongly suggest that you give her a call to set up an appointment.
One of our main goals is to inform and educate Chamber membership and partners on governmental issues that affect our businesses. As you may have read, the Chamber has been an advocate for the business community on a variety of fronts. We played a critical role in the development of North beach, the building of an 800 room convention center hotel, played a role in the General Obligation referendum and helped stop the potential closing of alcohol sales on Ocean Drive at 2:00 a.m. at several establishments located between 5th and 15th, which we thought would hurt the business community. We couldn’t do this without your help and support and we thank the many of you that campaigned. Additionally, you can be certain that the Chamber is monitoring City commission meetings and making sure we know what is being brought before our leadership that could affect the business community. We are grateful to the Mayor and Commission, which use us as a resource and ask for our guidance when deciding on laws that can affect us. Please feel free to contacts us with any advocacy issues you would like us to help you with. We are in this together.
As we start our new year, you can expect to see some very exciting new things as well, because I always feel that we need to continue to improve and to try new and different things. We have established two new Councils this year. The first recognizes the importance of development in our community and will deal with some of the many issues that contractors and developers face. This new Construction Council is chaired by Mark Gemignani and I am looking forward to the work that they will do. Recently, they had their second meeting, which was a huge success with State Representative Michael Grieco. The second new Council that we created is also of utmost importance to our community. It will be a Sustainability Council and will be Co- Chaired by Reinaldo Borges of Borges + Associate Architects. Reinaldo lives this issue every day, as do I and I plan to work alongside him as Vice Chair to find solutions.
Please remember that the Chamber staff is here to be resource for you. We encourage you to come to council meetings and our many networking events.
Best Wishes,
Wayne Pathman
Co-Chairperson
Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce
