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January 15, 2007

Team effort | Dana Mosher, the new executive director of the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce, is calling on the city's business community for input

By Whit Richardson

That lapse in full-time leadership has weakened the chamber's image in the community, says Dana Mosher, a 58-year-old Burnham resident who recently was hired as the organization's executive director. That's why he says his first mission is to "turn around the perception that the chamber isn't responsive to businesses."

In recent years, Belfast has grown in size and developed a healthy tourist trade. It now attracts young, diverse residents and offers a pleasant tourist alternative to the better-known midcoast communities of Camden and Rockland. The city of 6,800 saw its population rise almost eight percent from 2000 through 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

All that growth strained the meager resources of an all-volunteer chamber. So in early December, after the city pledged to help fund two full-time positions at the chamber for five years, the chamber board hired Mosher, a midcoast business veteran with plenty of community service experience, to take the reins of the 30-year-old organization.
Mosher says one of the first tasks is to develop a strategic business plan to outline the chamber's goals, but it isn't a plan he will develop alone. "I could sit down at my desk to write a business plan, but it wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on," Mosher says. "I'm just the messenger. [The business community has] to be involved in the process of developing that plan."

To do that, Mosher says he has met with at least 65 area business people in the last several weeks. With 275 members, he still has many more to reach. From those meetings, Mosher has heard complaints that the chamber doesn't do a very good job representing businesses. "The fact that we're hearing that from all sections of town is of concern to us," he says, "and the bottom line is that's what we're here for."

Mosher worked in human resources at International Paper in Bucksport for 18 years, and in the mid-1990s was the company's representative to Bucksport's local chamber of commerce. A few years later, the Bucksport chamber elected him president. "Truthfully, at the time I thought they were nuts," Mosher says, adding that he soon grew to enjoy the job. He served as president of the Bucksport Bay Area Chamber of Commerce from 1997-2000, doubling the chamber's membership. He retired from IP in 2003 and worked as a consultant until learning of the opening in Belfast. "As soon as I saw it I said, 'My God that's exactly what I want to do,'" Mosher says.

In his new post, Mosher says he'll also promote more regional cooperation between business groups in marketing the midcoast. "One of my goals is to think beyond the town lines," he says. "I think we have to be able to think more regionally, be more collaborative in our efforts of how to bring business to midcoast Maine."

When he headed the chamber in Bucksport, Mosher oversaw the creation and running of the successful Fort Knox Bay Festival, and he wants to bring similar events to Belfast. Such galas attract tourist dollars, he says, boost the profile of the city and the chamber, and generate revenue that the chamber can use to support a full-time staff. The Belfast chamber recently voted to sponsor and host a national boat builder's challenge next summer, an event Mosher sees as beneficial for the larger midcoast region.

Before looking too far down the road, though, Mosher says his first challenge is creating that all-important strategic plan for the chamber.

"If I'm going to ask businesses to join, they need to understand what it is we do, what's in it for them and how we're going to bring business to the area," Mosher says. "Then they'll have a reason to join."

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