Escambia, Santa Rosa team up on marketing

Although Escambia and Santa Rosa are neighbors with well-integrated economies, their separate chambers of commerce have a history of going it alone when recruiting new companies.

When Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Jim Hizer arrived last summer, he set as one of his key goals the marketing of the two-county area as a single entity.

Now, with a joint Escambia-Santa Rosa application for a $390,000 Economic Development Administration grant, Pensacola's chamber and Team Santa Rosa are taking a step in that direction.

"We've tried to do that in the past but it never came off," said Collier Merrill, a developer and restaurateur who is chairman of the chamber. "Now Escambia and Santa Rosa are working together and moving into a real partnership, but we're moving into it slowly."

Ferd Salomon, chairman of TEAM Santa Rosa, the county's economic development agency, said he believes the two counties are "in a pretty competitive position" to win the EDA grant.

The money was set aside by Congress last year to help oil-spill impacted communities.
If awarded, about $60,000 of the $390,000 would be used for a consultant to draw up a strategic marketing plan focusing on the types of target industries and jobs best suited for the Pensacola Bay area.

"We want to know what our best opportunities are to bring new industries to this area," said Brian McBroom, the Chamber's chief operating officer. "And we want to get this strategic plan up and running this year."

The remaining $330,000 would be put into revved-up marketing plans, including new website designs for both counties.

"Now that we've both agreed to act more regionally, we want to have events here that work toward both counties' advantage," Salomon said.

One key element of the new game plan includes wining and dining large groups of corporate site selectors in the Pensacola Bay area — an expensive, but effective, form of joint marketing, said Cindy Anderson, executive director of TEAM.

"What this grant will do is ... give us the money to host larger regional events here in this area," she said.

Merrill said that during the 20 years he's been involved with the Chamber, Escambia and Santa Rosa's business communities "have never really come together as they should have."

"Hopefully, this new regional alliance will work," he said.

Salomon is optimistic.

"I would say the relationship between TEAM and Pensacola's Chamber is good," he said. "It's certainly better than it has been. At the staff level, there's always been a tremendous amount of cooperation, and the two counties have never competed to the exclusion of the other."

In the past, Salomon said, most of the problems have been turf conflicts over political boundaries.

"From a pure business standpoint, there are no political boundaries," he said.