Parkites themselves are Park City’s greatest asset. We have a disproportionate number of accomplished, successful visionaries living here whose curiosity, ambition, and enthusiasm are a blessing, energizing our beautiful hometown.
For example, our Park Record “Small Town Stories” feature highlights a Chamber partner each weekend. The tales are invariably delightful, filled with optimism, humor, determination, flexibility, and, especially, love for the outdoors.
I am grateful some of our finest members wind up on our board of directors. Last week, we opened nominations for six Board seats on our 24-member panel. Any full Chamber partner in good standing is eligible to run.
My dad loved those WW2 movies where the platoon was always a cross-section of 1940s working-class American men. There would be someone from a factory, a farm, a high-end profession, an urban tenement, an immigrant, and an aristocrat. You’d hear Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern accents and a classic Western twang (seems there was always a cowboy from Wyoming or Montana).
Thankfully, the meaning of diversity has changed since then, but our board shows the kind of slice of life those movies imagined, bringing many representative voices to the table.
Joining our board puts you alongside local business legends, scrappy new owners, people who have emigrated internationally or packed up the car to move cross-country, and who are bakers, physical therapists, personal concierges, restaurateurs, property managers and distillers, many working with family. In addition, you will encounter leaders of Summit County and Park City governments, people from major nonprofits like Park City Hospital, Sundance, Mountain Trails Foundation, PC Christian Center and Kimball Arts Center, our big resorts, and major recreation players such as Ski Utah and the Olympic Legacy Foundation.
This group produces impressive achievements like the Sustainable Tourism Plan and provides critical internal leadership, too, such as the Chamber Strategic Plan introduced last summer. They also get to help host great membership events like our first Chamber Snow Day at Park City Mountain March 30.
As a Chamber partner, please consider running. It requires time and commitment – but you make valuable connections while having your say in Park City’s responsible, sustainable economic development. You can apply before 5 p.m. April 26 using the online form at visitparkcity.com/board. A board-appointed nominating committee leads the open process and selects applicants to be placed on a ballot. Our 950-plus Chamber members begin voting on May 30, and the six candidates receiving the most votes will be seated in July to a four-year term.
If civic engagement appeals to you and you are not a Chamber member yet, now is a great time to join our dreamers, doers, movers and shakers – and have fun doing it. Join today, and you’ll be set to attend our festive after-hours mixer May 11, hosted by Premier Pet Lodge, with delicious food and beverage;, the Park City Business University class on time management and productivity May 3; and coming up May 22, the 2023 Wasatch Back Economic Summit at the Grand Summit Hotel at Canyons Village. Just contact us at membership@visitparkcity.com. I hope to welcome you aboard soon.