Bar Harbor Chamber director to step down at the end of the year
PHOTO / COURTESY OF BAR HARBOR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Alf Anderson, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, will step down at the end of the year.
As the head of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce prepares to step down from his position at the end of this year, he looked back on the organization’s role during the pandemic as one of its biggest accomplishments.
“I am extremely proud of the chamber’s role in helping our community navigate the COVID-19 pandemic,” Alf Anderson, the chamber’s executive director, told Mainebiz. “None of us had ever been through something like that before but we worked with our community to get through it and I’m very proud of the way we all came together at that time.”
Anderson announced Wednesday that he has decided to leave his position as executive director in order to relocate, with his wife, Heather, to southern Maine.
“I will be staying on through the end of the year in order to support the community with our fall events and the production of our 2023 Bar Harbor Visitors Guide,” he said.
He added, “This was a very difficult decision, but we realized over the past few months that we need to be closer to our families.”
Anderson said he would stay on through December.
“The past seven and a half years have been challenging yet rewarding,” he said.
Originally from Connecticut, Anderson graduated from Nichols College in Dudley, Mass., and spent the next 15 years on Boston's North Shore, working in the academic publishing industry.
In 2013, he moved to Bar Harbor, and was hired by the chamber in 2015 as the director of membership sales and marketing.
In 2019, after an extensive search, he was named the chamber’s new executive director.
“One thing that I’ve witnessed during my time at the chamber is that our community is extremely resilient and durable, as demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “Business owners on Mount Desert Island are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever encountered and I am awed by their determination day in and day out.”
When Anderson first took the helm in 2019, he cited expansion of the visitor season to deliver a sustainable year-round economy as a long-term goal.
That vision remains true today.
“For the past 25 years or so, the chamber and the town of Bar Harbor have worked hard to expand our business community beyond the traditional summer tourism season of Memorial Day to Labor Day,” he said. “Making our region more of a year-round community has been a great challenge but one in which we have had significant success.”
That includes collaborations to invite the cruise industry to visit in the fall months and offering community activities such as the chamber’s Early Bird Pajama Sale & Bed Races. Last month, he discussed a new initiative to partner with the Criterion Theater, in downtown, for a “movie in your PJs” as a follow-up designed to entice people to have lunch or brunch and continue to spend time in the downtown area.
The festivities have made it viable for many businesses to remain open beyond Indigenous People’s Day, he said.
Together, the initiatives have been able to expand the tourism season into mid-November.
“The chamber will continue to seek ways to expand our tourism season and offer more year-round opportunities to residents, visitors and business owners,” Anderson said. “There is so much more that can be done in this area, like expanding our events program and welcoming new and different types of businesses.”
He continued, “Mount Desert Island is such a lovely place to live and I don’t see the demand for this waning anytime soon. So, I foresee new programs offering exciting opportunities for expanding our offerings to residents and visitors alike.”
The chamber’s board of directors will form a search committee soon and begin looking for for the next executive director.
“I have no doubt that they will find lots of interested candidates who will help take the chamber to new heights,” Anderson said.
For now, he said, he’s focused on the chamber’s fall events and the production of its 2023 visitor guide.
“There is quite a bit to wrap up before my departure at the end of December,” he said. “Beyond that, I just hope that I can find an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to an organization.”
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