2 Valley Chambers Decide to Merge

Hoping to find strength in numbers, two chambers of commerce in north San Fernando Valley recently voted to merge--and three more chambers are voting on a separate proposed merger this week, chamber officials said Monday.

Within the last few weeks, the Northridge/Porter Ranch and Chatsworth/Porter Ranch chambers of commerce voted to merge, forming the new 500-plus-member Northwest San Fernando Valley chamber, officials said.

In addition, ballots went out Saturday and Monday to members of the Pacoima, Mission Hills and Greater San Fernando chambers, proposing a merger of those groups to create a 400-member Northeast San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce.

In both cases, backers of the moves hope to replace smaller, often underfunded chambers with a larger body with more financial muscle and political clout.

Throughout the region, local business organizations have worked to retain their relevance and membership rosters.

At the same time, some smaller chambers without the wherewithal for a full-time staff or extensive programs have found their influence, and attendance, flagging.

Mergers such as those in the north Valley are seen as an effort to fight back.

“Things are different today,” said J. Richard Leyner, chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, an umbrella group.

“It’s now what you can do for the businesspeople, more so than parades and parties. What can you do to improve their business and how can you prove it.

“A 100-person chamber does not have enough strength to go forward into the new millennium.”

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Even some chambers seen as strong have found it necessary to cast their nets wide to keep membership, and operating funds, up.

“To make chambers viable today, almost every chamber has had to expand the region it serves,” said Patti Friedman, chief executive of the Greater San Fernando chamber, which serves businesses in the city of San Fernando but gets 60% of its membership from outside that city.

She noted that neither the Mission Hills nor Pacoima chamber has a full-time staff, but that the San Fernando chamber does.

All three boards have approved the merger, Friedman said. Members of the chambers are expected to return their ballots by June 30.

“It seemed like it would be a great value to bring the whole area together,” said Larry Mouchawar, board president of the 85-member Mission Hills Chamber of Commerce.

“The more businesses, the more events . . . the more networking possibilities the better.”

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Mouchawar said the merger vote on his eight-member board was unanimous.

Not so for the Northridge vote, where longtime board member Walter Prince voted against merging, saying he feared a loss of community identity.

“The aesthetic concern is over the loss of community identity,” Prince said. “I think you lose that when you merge under a generic name.”

The new Northwest chamber will be located in the Chatsworth Train Station, site of the old Chatsworth chamber. The site of the Northeast chamber, if the merger is approved, is still under discussion.

Dave Kilby, vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce and liaison to the local chambers, said he is seeing more chambers, especially smaller ones, express an interest in merging.

“It’s been taking place in other parts of the nation and it’s reached California in the last few years,” he said.

“Business structures have changed over the years and we ought to at least be looking at this.”