Friday, March 18, 2005 | 9:57 a.m.
The North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce is moving to be closer to its local members and increase its visibility.
"The chamber's been in the downtown area of North Las Vegas since its inception," chamber President and Chief Executive Sharon Powers said. "With the growth of the city and how everything is moving north, the chamber thought this was the opportune time to serve the business community and our members. We're really excited because the visibility for the chamber will be incredible."
The chamber is moving to 3345 W. Craig Road in North Las Vegas and is scheduled to open its new office May 1.
She said the new location was "critical to the growth and future of the chamber," which has more than 700 members that are based in North Las Vegas, Las Vegas and Henderson.
Most of the chamber members that are based in North Las Vegas are located closer to the new location, Powers said, adding that others are based elsewhere but conduct business in the city.
John Wilson, chairman of the chamber and executive partner of Southwest Ambulance, said it is important for the chamber to be more accessible to the business community.
"A huge part of the business corridor is off Craig Road," he said. "By making us more visible to the business community as a whole is going to strengthen our membership."
The new chamber office will be near 2,500 square feet -- about 1,000 square feet smaller than the current office -- but has more usable space and a larger meeting room, Powers said.
The chamber sold its location at 2290 McDaniel St. and opted to lease space for three years at the new location.
"With the growth of the city and how it's changing, when our lease is up in three years, maybe the city is going to look differently than it does right now so we wanted to leave our options open," Powers said.
Another reason the chamber's board wanted to lease space is to focus more attention on the members, Wilson said.
"There's a great deal of excitement that we no longer are a landlord so we can focus on our primary mission of serving the members and the business community in general," he said. "To take that burden off of our staff is a step in the right direction."
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