The Business Chronicle
October 2000
 Galen Bremmer, Editor		 Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce
111 S. Wabash St.
Wabash, IN 46992 
http://www.communinet.org/wa_chamber/
e-mail - wacc@ctlnet.com
phone: (219) 563-1168
fax: (219) 563-6920

WABASH VALLEY CHRYSLER - SEE HOW THEY'VE GROWN

It is just coming up on one year since new owners charged into the automobile sales market in Wabash - and have they made a statement! If you don't believe it, drive over to the south side of Wabash some evening and see what is lighting up the southern Wabash skies. Wabash Valley Chrysler and their new owners, George and Dan Fetsco, have made a substantial investment into the Wabash market with the latest being a 20,000 sq. ft. Body Shop just opened last month. The ground in front of the shop has expanded the show lot to one rivaling the inventory at major city dealers. In addition to the Body Shop, a Truck Prep- area building and Detail Shop join the recently built Main Showroom and Service Shop building. Body Shop Manager, Bob Blackburn, recently took the Chamber staff on a tour of his new area. Bob was quick to point out that the body shop was designed to work on all makes and models of trucks and automobiles. Starting with the new Chief frame rack that is used to straighten frames on larger trucks, Bob also points out the Genesis electronic measuring system that can straighten the frame to within micro units of initial specs. Then we move to the Metal Shop where there is room for six metal specialists to perform any kind of sheet metal work needed. A new, high tech, dustless, air vac system has been installed to keep the shop and surroundings clean and free of dust. Currently, Bob has two ICAR certified technicians. From there vehicles move into the Paint Shop where you are greeted with two booths looking like they are equipped for alien ships landing in Wabash. With air flow completely controlled, a downdraft system sucks all the air through filters to remove dust, sand, and over-spray. Primer and finishing coats can be applied to ready the vehicle for the Expert 2000 Bake System. This system heats the vehicle up to 165 degrees baking the paint on and drying the finish; consequently, the vehicle may be pulled out of the stall in one-half hour and taken out into any weather. It can even be washed. Custom factory colors matching any factory paint job are created by the computerized mixing room that holds formulas for all vehicles. Wabash Valley Chrysler has expanded their hours to 7 PM evenings, and also added Saturday service hours. Stop out and see all the changes that have been made, and watch for people from all over this part of the state coming in to Wabash  

CHAMBER
MEMBER NEWS

Please route this newsletter to the other staff in your business to keep them up- to-date on services, functions and programs available to all employees of our member companies!

Have you had changes or improvements in your business? Have you received an award, reached a milestone, or completed additional training? We want to know. Share these things with your chamber partners. They too enjoy hearing. Call, FAX, E-Mail, or mail notes to the chamber office.

Morningstar Supply, 1018 N. Cass St., Wabash, and Visionary Web Design, L.L.C., 58 W. Market St., Suite I, recently held ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Morningstar Supply held an open house in honor of their Grand Opening, while Visionary Web Design was announcing their acquisition of Hipbone Computers.

The Honeywell Center has announced the following activities during this newsletter period:

Kerri Mattern, Wabash County Hospital Marketing Director, announces that tickets are now on sale for the Wabash County Hospital Foundation's fourth annual cash raffle with winnings of $10,000, $2,000, and $1,000. This raffle coincides with the Foundation's Gala Celebration to be held Friday, November 17th, at the Honeywell Center. Proceeds of the raffle will support the Diabetes Self-Management Education program and the Asthma Education and Disease Control program. The $1,000 drawing will be an early- bird drawing to be held Friday, October 13th, live on Oldies 106. Tickets are $20 each or 6 for $100, and are available at Wabash County Hospital, or Bechtol Grocery, Video Sideline, True Value Hardware, the Sweet Shop, and Love Bug. The Fort Wayne Wizards have announced a new General Manager and several other staff promotions. Mike Nutter, formerly Assistant General Manager of Corporate Sales, has accepted the General Manager position. He has been in baseball for 10 years. Other promotions include David Lorenz as Senior Assistant General Manager/ Ticket Operations, Ryan Shoener as Assistant General Manager/ Corporate Sales, and Jackie Miller to Director of Marketing and Media Relations. Jody Kinsey has been promoted to Senior Account Executive with Physicians Health Plan. This announcement from Vicki Johnson, Director of Marketing with Physicians Health Plan of Northen Indiana, Inc., 8101 West Jefferson Blvd., Fort Wayne, IN 46804. Tel. 219-432-6690. The Wabash Business Community is fortunate to have Bob Fuller back active as Branch Manager of Indiana Lawrence Bank's Wabash Branch located at 1307 North Cass Street at the entrance to Wabash Village Shopping Center. Bob has a lot of history with our business community and our Chamber! Stop by and welcome Bob to his new position. Ford Meter Box, Inc. is very pleased to be the recipient of another person joining the "I've come back to Wabash" Club. John Philippsen, 1990 Chamber chair, has returned to Wabash to be Chief Financial Officer for Ford Meter Box, Inc. We welcome him and, hopefully, eventually his family back to our community. Watch for the Grand Opening of Ponderosa Restaurant at the end of this month. Ponderosa is now owned by Customer Motivated Restaurants of Indianapolis. They plan some special events around the 30th of October.

NEW YEAR STARTS

September 13 was an important day in the life of your Chamber of Commerce. In addition to the regular monthly meeting for the 2000 Board of Directors, incoming Directors and Committee Chairpersons joined in the annual "Program of Work" retreat. After opening remarks from incoming Chair Jerry Banks, and President Galen Bremmer, Linda Mirante led a spirited discussion of the coming year. All of the notes and suggestions are still being digested and put into an easy- to-see document that will be distributed throughout 2001. This will also be printed in our upcoming Annual Report to you, our members. Jerry is currently working on securing both new and continuing committee chairpersons. Those chairpersons will be out looking for committee members as the organization process continues. Though theBoard did pass a fiscal year 2001 budget at the last meeting, all agree there are some real challenges included. We need to upgrade our membership software on our computer just to keep up with the times. Chamberware has just issued a new version. We made a commitment several years ago to use this software to aid in information tracking of our members. FYI - we just updated to the newest version of One Write Plus for our financial software. The second challenge in the budget is the inclusion of $5,000 profit from a fund raiser of unknown nature at this time. Many of you know that we have done this before, scheduling events like the circus and wrestling match, emerging in worse shape than we started. We have to be very careful on this. If any one has any suggestions for a way to increase our revenue, please give us a call. If membership keeps growing and the Gold Level Membership would be successful, we may not have to have an actual fund raiser. Let us know what YOU think.

NEW BROWN BAG SERIES

We had a very nice group of about sixteen at the first Brown Bag Seminar in this series. Those that came received some great insight into the operation of the Indiana Wage and Hour Audits by the Department of Labor with Tom Gondek. He really made himself available to us at any time. We are fortunate to have such a caring person to assist us locally. Mark your calendar with the date listed below for the next seminar. Please spread the word.

November 9 Customer Satisfaction Wabash County Hospital Customer Satisfaction Team Sponsor: Wabash County Hospital Noon at Ivy Tech (Note location change) Call the Chamber office today at 563-1168 to register yourself and a group of associates!

TIME TO CONSIDER CHAMBER GIFT CERTIFICATES
The holiday season is fast approaching! Many businesses have some sort of an additional gift program for their employees during the holidays. Have you considered using Chamber gift certificates for your needs? Now, with over 300 redemption locations LOCALLY IN WABASH, this program is just a winwin----win situation. The Hoosier Heartland Corridor is a great project, and will bring a lot of traffic into Wabash, but this holiday season we must also be prepared to face the fact that it is going to be easier to get out of Wabash to shop. LET'S KEEP AS MANY DOLLARS AS WE CAN AT HOME! Support your local stores. Chamber gift certificates are good at ANY Chamber member. They may be purchased either in $5 increments (for those under $50 per person) or in any increment you desire for larger than $50 gifts. All the business has to do is to treat them as they would any check in their register procedures. Simple and easy. Yes, they do expire after 6 months and in some cases they are not redeemed. This money is then returned to the Chamber to cover the operating costs of the system. So, you help your Chamber out, too. Join businesses like Wabash County Hospital, GenCorp, Alumitech, Miller's Merry Manor, Jefferson Smurfit, and others who are regular users. If you have a large order, call ahead to make sure that they are ready for you when needed.
WABASH JOINS CHAMBERBIZ
The Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce, you may recall, entered into an agreement with CHAMBERBIZ several months ago. Well, now that you have had some time to go into that web site and look at it, we would like to know what you think. Did you register as a Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce user? ChamberBiz has just increased the stipend paid to the host Chambers for each person registering. We will receive $2 for each new registrant. If we could get enough businesses to register, we could omit that extra fund raiser. But, more importantly, we think that it has some useful information for Wabash businesses. PLEASE GIVE IT A TRY! Go to our web site - www.communinet.org/wa_chamber and click on the ChamberBiz button. While we are on the subject, we are finalizing our new web site. Mark Sapusek, Visionary Web, has been working very hard on creating a more modern and easy- to-use site. We have also secured www.wabashchamber.org as our new domain. Exciting things are happening. We will be able to have much more up-to-date information on this site. It became very difficult to make any changes on the old site as everything had to go through Mark. We are exited about what is coming, but as of yet do not have an opening date. We also secured www.wabashchamber.net and www.wabashchamber.com as being owned by us but flowing into wabashchamber.org. Unfortunately, our email address will change to wabashchamber.org, also.

INDIANA LAWRENCE BANK FIRST GOLD LEVEL MEMBER

WOW!! What a super response. Last month in this newsletter, we announced that a new gold level membership had been created for our Chamber. The ink had hardly dried, and the mailing had just left our office, when I received a call from Keri Weaver, Marketing Coordinator for Indiana Lawrence Bank, stating that they wished to be included at that level. Consequently, they are our FIRST GOLD LEVEL MEMBER! In conversation with Keri, I learned that when the North Manchester Chamber initiated a similar program, ILB was also first to commit to that support for them. We hadn't even begun to market the opportunity yet. Your Chamber salutes Indiana Lawrence Bank for their commitment to the business community in our county. Another chapter to the story is that you will remember we also announced a new dues structure for financial institutions and utilities in that newsletter. While most financial institutions will experience a decline in investment, ILB was going to see a large increase that made us fearful of their membership continuation not even considering the gold level. Way to prove us wrong! WHO WILL BE NEXT? Gold Level Membership is only $500 above your normal dues investment. You will receive $100 directly back in the form of Chamber Bucks to be spent at any Chamber function where there is a fee. Your business will also be highlighted as Gold Level Member at every Chamber Function. Call us to become gold today.

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS

(please add to your Buyer's Guide)
Physicians Health Plan of Northern Indiana, Inc., 8101 W. Jefferson, Fort Wayne, IN 46804. Marketing Director, Vicki Johnson, wants you to know that PHP is a not-for-profit health care corporation providing managed care programs that are affordable, accessible and easy to use. Telephone 219-432-6690.

Many thanks to yohe realty, inc. for their
sponsorship of the following new members.

K & M Floor Covering, 1288 Stitt St., Wabash, specializes in all your floor covering needs, from carpets of all types to ceramic, vinyl, hardwood, laminates and even specialty items, such as cork flooring. K & M handles both residential and commericial flooring.

Mi Pueblo Mexican Restaurant, located at the east end of Wabash Village Shopping Center, is open Sunday through Thursday 11 - 10, and Friday and Saturday 11 - 10:30. Manager, Ramon Aquirre, tells us they specialize in authentic Mexican food made fresh on location daily. Call ahead for take-out orders at 219-563-1553.

Christie's Brides and Bows and Little Luxuries Lingerie, 1305 N. Cass St., Wabash, co-occupy the small building just behind Radio Shack at the end of Wabash Village Shopping Center. Christie's features formalwear for the entire wedding party with a complete line of wedding accessories. Owners Christie Klutz and Denise Carpenter invite you to call them with any wedding needs you may have at 219-563-3572. Little Luxuries offers a complete selection of lingerie, sleepwear, loungewear and foundations. Stop in and talk to owner Noelle Herren and check out their great variety of special items. Hours are Mon. and Thurs. 11 - 5, Wed. and Fri. 11 - 8, or Sat. 10 - 8, with other hours by appointment.

Gold Sponsor

membership

Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce is pleased to announce

Indiana Lawrence Bank

as it's FIRST Gold Sponsor Member!

Stop in and see Bob Fuller at

1307 N. Cass St., Wabash.

Telephone 219-569-9100

The above is our newsletter tribute to Gold Level Memberships, as announced in last month's newsletter. If you would like to see your company spotlighted here, please call the Chamber office for more information at 219-563-1168.

 

BOARD MEMBERS - 2000

Board Chair:
Brian Howenstine
True Value Hardware

Chair Elect:
Jerry Banks
Cinergy/PSI

Vice Chair:
Steve Ford
Ford Meter Box

Treasurer:
Bill Foulke
Cinergy/PSI

Past Chair:
Troy Cole
Ford Meter Box

President:
Galen L. Bremmer
Wabash Area Chamber
of Commerce

 

Ed Bellows
Norwest Bank 

David Hunter
Wabash County Hospital 

Lynn Yohe
Yohe Realty 

David L. Mann 
Northwestern Mutual Insurance 

Dick Rider
Wabash Marketplace 

Skip Daughtry
Beauchamp & McSpadden 

Kerry Heiser
Frances Slocum Bank 

Jane Hentgen
Grandstaff-Hentgen Funeral Service

 

 Larry Hoover
Quality Electric 

Shelly Neal 
Family Service Society/MADD

Roger Cromer
First Federal Savings Bank

Rick Gray
Martin Yale Industries

Kevin Leming
'the paper' of Wabash County

JoEllen Lambert
Farm Bureau Insurance

Greg Pettit
Pettit Printing

 

Mark Your Calendars

RIBBON CUTTING ON HIGHWAY 24

As of the writing of this newsletter, it appears that there will be a big celebration on Thursday, October 19th, with the official Ribbon Cutting and Grand Opening of the eastern part of the Hoosier Heartland Industrial Corridor. This includes the Fort Wayne to Logansport part of the project, bringing the dreams of many a Wabash resident to reality. Many governmental dignitaries, including Governor O'Bannon, will be around Wabash that afternoon to celebrate the milestone. Watch for further details as to where the ceremony will be performed. Glenn Tanner, Jack Porter, and Phil Magner deserve a few moments to throw their hats in the air! All started through a special Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce Committee and the commitment of these gentlemen. 

October 11 - Business Before Hours 7 - 8:30 AM @ The Honeywell Center 

November 2 - Annual Dinner 

7 - Election Day 

9 - Customer Satisfaction Noon Brown Bag Seminar @ Ivy Tech 

17 - Celebration of Light

Your Wabash Area Chamber of Commerce is only as strong as its member involvement. We invite and encourage all our members to actively participate in the growth of our community. Below is a list of our committees. If you have an area of interest, please call the Chamber to volunteer your resources today!

Government Affairs
Partners in Education
Membership
Fundraising: EXPO & WACC-Y Golf
Small Business
Seminar
Public Relations
Long Range Planning
Scholarship Pageant
Annual Dinner
Dues Structure
Ambassador Program

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