WESTWOOD—Westwood Chamber of Commerce president Michael Fitzsimmons wrote members last week to inform them of the dissolution of the organization.
“This year has seen only two paid memberships and those have been forwarded to BizHub, a subcommittee of Celebrate Westwood,” he said.
Effective June 22, the Westwood Chamber of Commerce will no longer have insurance coverage for events or activities. Insurance for the officers and director will expire on Sept. 3 and the board will dissolve the non-profit and begin winding up the organization.
Fitzsimmons said, “Thank you for the opportunity to serve as president from 2008–2011 and 2020–2023” — the latter period, of course, marked, hard, by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fitzsimmons, who owns Westwood Art Gallery, told Pascack Press on June 27 that the board has been discussing the end of the road for about a year, and felt the time was right to defer to both BizHub and the Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce, which have much to offer that the local chamber did not.
BizHub is “a committee created to serve the networking and information sharing needs of the local business community including any interested business owners and operators, including retailers, eateries, services, and at-home entrepreneurs.”
Organizers Lauren Letizia and RoseAnn Ciarlante clarified to Pascack Press, “We are not directing business initiatives in the way a chamber would. We are providing an outlet for businesses to connect much in the same way CW’s overarching mission is to connect the community through communications, programming, and events.”
The Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce (GPVCOC) is a 501(c)(3) serving, from north to south, Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake, River Vale, Old Tappan, Hillsdale, Washington Township, Westwood, Emerson, and Oradell.
Fitzsimmons said, “I would say in the past two years or more we’ve been partnering with Celebrate Westwood and we see this BizHub as a transition to serve the business owners — particularly home business owners, not necessarily retail, not necessarily on Westwood Avenue or in the downtown — reaching out to the other areas, behind the hospital and that sort of thing.”
“Their dues are lower than what we charged… any dues that we received since the beginning of the year have gone toward memberships in BizHub. So that’s what happened with the two new-member dues that we received,” he said.
Fitzsimmons said “There are fixed costs in running a chamber of commerce, and I’ve got to say they’re probably close to $2,000 or $3,000 a year easily, and without any fundraising events, we just have depended on dues primarily for the past four or five years.”
He added, “Honestly, there just isn’t the interest, and I don’t feel there’s a next generation to step up. I think that next generation is already active in BizHub.”
Fitzsimmons said, “For those who want a traditional chamber of commerce in terms of more networking, in terms of professionals, the GPVCOC has been doing it longer, probably, than the Westwood Chamber of Commerce, and they cover all 10 towns. They do events — the most obvious is the annual Breakfast With the Mayors — and it provides access.”
Fitzsimmons said he and Westwood chamber board member Tony Pallogudis also are active on the GPVCOC, so he’ll be keeping a hand in.
Meanwhile, he said, “Somebody has to turn off the lights and lock the doors, and I want to do it the right way and make sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. It falls to me.”
Fitzsimmons said the Westwood chamber in its current incarnation dates to 2004. “At that time the old Pascack Valley Hospital got on board to support it, and we had our first few meetings there. JJ Krachtus from Conrad’s; the first president was Joe Abou-Daoud; Lisa [Fernino] from Greetings Unlimited was active…”
He said, “There had been a hiatus from 1999, 2000, when Timmy Hampton, Jay and Elin Stolz, Sid Finkelstein, who had Jessica’s Feet, were the driving force of that chamber.”
He described the end of this iteration as “aging out, the way neighborhoods change.”
With a lack of volunteers, he said, the pressure was becoming too great a distraction.
“I have to focus on my business and try to reinvent that and I’m sure everybody else is in the same boat. Covid brought on change. What would have happened in 10 years happened in two. And it’s a different landscape now, and everybody has issues with the supply chain or whatever else it is,” he said.
He added, “You’ve got to pay attention and you really have to focus. And that’s always been a conflict, when the members of the chamber of commerce are running their own business and so often taking time away from their business to do the events and planning and meetings for the chamber. I don’t know anybody who has that kind of time on their hands.”
For years the Westwood chamber has sponsored the borough’s famed Home for the Holidays — the traditional start of winter revelry in the Pascack Valley, with its parade, dance performances, cider, hot cocoa, donuts, giveaways, and Santa Claus’s arrival atop a fire truck — most recently in advancing the money for the DJ who performs outside Starbucks. “That can all continue under the Recreation Department. It’s kind of the same core of volunteers who organize Home for the Holidays, so it’s not a big impact,” he said.
It was the Volunteer Fire Department that in the 1950s inaugurated what we know today as Home for the Holidays, when it conveyed Santa to the then newly opened Pascack Valley Hospital to visit with young patients. The event started taking Santa as well to the park bandstand to hand out candy canes and to hear kiddos’ gift requests. The tradition filled out into the 1970s and 1980s with Chamber of Commerce and borough assistance, including the tree lighting. Recent sponsors also have included Hackensack Meridian Health Pascack Valley Medical Center, the Borough of Westwood, and Pascack Press.
In the immediate next steps, Fitzsimmons will connect the chamber’s webmaster, Rapunzel Creative, which was furnishing the website pro-bono. The chamber’s business directory is a couple of years out of date. The site will likely redirect Celebrate Westwood or the BizHub site.
And there’s a chamber ribbon-cutting set for July 13, for a medical practice. New businesses looking to set up a ribbon cutting once the chamber goes away can contact Celebrate Westwood or the Borough Council.
Asked for highlights of his chamber’s run, Fitzsimmons singled out two: starting Taste of Westwood, the annual foodie fundraiser for the Friends of the Library; and Oktoberfest.
“We ran [Taste of Westwood] for 10 years or more and then when I got back involved, we ran the Oktoberfest, and I think that came off great. It was the brewery before the brewery [Five Dimes Brewery, opened in 2022]. P.J. Finnegan’s setting up a beer tent, and [John Owens’] Bat Barry’s/Center Tavern, setting up their beer tents in the streets, pretzels going on, a band in the street, facepainting, Westwood Prime Eats ran out of meat. That all came off and everybody had a great time. As far as I know that was the last time we closed the avenue for an event. Bounce houses… it was a last hurrah.”
Funding was fragile
Fitzsimmons said the chamber board met last year “to try to look at other aspects of funding, be it from the state or town, but you have to create, like, a business improvement district, and I don’t think we’re there yet; and so honestly, for the chamber under the bylaws, the source of funding is sustainable memberships. And that’s up to the members. If they don’t see a value to it, I can understand.”
He also said there’s a legislative chamber “going door to door, and they advocate at the federal level… that’s something that we as a local chamber would never have the ability to do. So I can see where local businesses, with their hard-earned dollars, kind of want concrete results they can point to.”
‘A sea change…’
The conversation turned to the Iron Horse restaurant, whose owners, Lee and Annie Tremble, major Westwood (and Pascack Valley) boosters, just announced they’ve sold the business after a run of more than 50 years (see Back in Time, page 4). “Lee did everything he could to keep it the way it was — transferred ownership to his son — they sold to someone they know. But there’ll be changes.”
Fitzsimmons said overall, “It is a sea change, and there are going to be changes coming to Westwood in the way businesses have to reinvent themselves and find out where their revenue stream is going to come from.”
He said, “It’s kind of what happens to workers, too. When you don’t work during Covid and you have some stimulus money, you reassess: Do I want to stay in the restaurant business for another 20 years, or is there something I’ve always wanted to do? Business owners are the same way. You get a perspective on it and you say, on to the next chapter.”