Leadership Award an Honor and Challenge

I had a wonderful honor last week to accept the Leader of the Year Award from Leadership Clark County. It was wonderful and humbling, especially with Jimmy Sheehan also honored as the Distinguished Community Leader and Mark Stephenson as Alumnus of the Year. I look at the award not as having achieved a pinnacle in leadership but as a challenge to continue to develop leadership skills that can benefit Greater Springfield. The award as I see it isn’t that Mike McDorman is a leader worthy of any honor, but that the Chamber has a critical leadership role in this community and that’s what is being recognized. I see my role and the Chamber’s role as being stewards of this time in the community’s history. Our challenge is to make things better for those who come after us. Isn’t that what leadership is all about? I was fortunate to be in the Leadership Clark County Class of 2001. Leadership Clark County opened my eyes to a community that I had lived in my whole life, but had never seen before. It was the key to uncovering many of the opportunities that would build in me the tools for success in what I do today. I got to see firsthand how the strengths of different people coming together around a common cause can help move an organization forward in extraordinary ways. I liked the experience so much, in fact, that I decided to leave Ohio Edison in 2006 to become a part of the Chamber of Commerce. I hope and pray we at the Chamber can use our leadership position to move this community forward. Have a great Chamber day! (Don’t forget to vote for refurbishing the Lagonda Club building at www.refresheverything.com/lagondachallenge.)

Vote for the Lagonda Building

A stone’s throw from the current Chamber of Commerce offices at Commerce Pointe sits a once grand edifice, now abandoned. It is the Lagonda Building (at the corner of Spring and High Streets) perhaps better known to some as the Chamber of Commerce Building. Built in 1894 and home to the Chamber from 1923 until 1963, it retains a certain stateliness despite its age and abandonment. If a practical use and funds were found to bring it back to life, it would once again be a crown jewel in the downtown. It can happen with your help. Art Wilson and his wife own the building. They bought it in 1988. They have entered the project in an online voting contest conducted each month by Pepsi at www.refresheverything.com. Voting takes place all this month. When you log on, you will see on the left hand side four rectangles with dollar amounts of $5,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $250,000. The Wilsons have applied for a $250,000 grant, the most difficult to achieve, obviously. You can vote by going to www.refresheverything.com/lagondachallenge. The Wilsons want to turn the building into a youth and events-oriented community club. I’ll go so far as to say our youth, particularly our teens, have been neglected in this regard. Here’s an opportunity to rehab a building and make it accessible to today’s teens and others. Sounds like a worthy project to me. Now go vote and use all your social media avenues to get the word out to others. Have a great Chamber day!