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Business & Tech

Bethany: We Are Open For Business

May 14 event will connect owners of businesses, small and large

The Bethany Economic Development Commission wants to get the word out that this town is open for business.

“Bethany has many more businesses than you see visible from Route 63,” says commission chairperson Elizabeth Appel. “Bethany certainly grew up as a farming community and that’s business, but we have a number of people in town who are starting to look around and say, ‘hey, it’s time for us to mobilize a little bit and be more visible.’”

On May 14, the BEDC will hold its second annual 'Bethany in Business: Meet, Mingle, and Learn' event for the owners and representatives of businesses that are located in Bethany. This free event will be held at the Laticrete International headquarters at 91 Amity Road on Monday May 14, 2012 from 3-5 p.m.

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The event features a tour of the Laticrete facility and a keynote address by Henry B. Rothberg, vice president of training at Laticrete. State and local officials will also make presentations and the event will conclude with an informal discussion among attendees.

All business leaders, home-based ‘solopreneurs’ and individuals interested in starting a business are encouraged to attend.

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“The business community itself is not even aware of each other and who is there. We’re kind of starting from ground zero. It’s a shy group and we’re having this event to get folks together and talk,” says Appel.

Laticrete is a 56-year-old company that creates installation products for ceramic tile and stone. The purpose of the event is to build communication between businesses. Appel has been on the commission for two years. When she retired from the state’s Department of Economic Development, she saw a need in Bethany to get business people communicating.

 “What we’re trying to do more than anything is to get people to realize there is a business community here and we should buy local and buy from each other. We also have in town a lot of artisans and craft people who build and create things,” Appel says. As part of the mobilizing of business, she’s finding many residents setting up home offices as opposed to renting or leasing real estate.

“With the turn in the economy, a lot of people are moving away from owning real estate and are going back to home offices,” she says, adding, “That’s good and bad. The bad part is we don’t see them anymore and the business community becomes invisible. It’s good for those folks because they save money on overhead and operations. It’s not good for the town, though, because if they’re not filling up commercial real estate, the taxes are lost.”

Bethany will likely never be a town with a ‘Post Road’ style corridor, simply due to the fact that the town does not have the utilities to support a Walmart or other big business.

“Quite frankly, that’s okay. We know who we are and our style of life attracts people to this community. People live here because they like it and it’s small and manageable. Bethany is not overly regulatory and it’s a nice place to work,” says Appel.

One of the commission’s roles is to retain those small businesses, even the home-based businesses, so as they grow and hire, they’ll hire from the community and then the ECD can step in and help them find available real estate in town.

The commission is building a Bethany in Business blog that will have information about state and federal programs, real estate and financial information and events that are happening in the region.

 “Next year we’ll focus more on our appearance,” Appel says. “We’ll start beautifying ourselves more as a country town that we think of ourselves as and attracting the businesses that will fit here. We’ll have more lively meetings and launch a ‘Buy Bethany’ campaign so that people who live here and work here will buy from businesses here,” she says.

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