Why local
matters
“Social capital provides the glue which
facilitates co-operation, exchange and
innovation.”
— Th e New Economy: Beyond the Hype
“Th e Chamber shall strengthen the
identity and enhance the image of our business
community.”
— Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce
vision statement
Lori with the 1982 El Camino she and husband
Joey are bringing back to life
I
t’s important for the reader to remember
these numbers for later reference:
• 30.2 million
• 99.9%
• less than 500
Last October, Lori Arce-Torres, executive
director of the Lincoln City Chamber of
Commerce, and I met at Chinook Winds
Casino Resort for a half-hour interview on
her radio show.
It was her
once-a-week
venue to interview
business owners,
local movers
and shakers, and
GO BENEATH THE
blokes like me
SURFACE WITH
— talking about
PAUL HAEDER
my work heading
up an anti-
poverty program in Lincoln County, Family
Independence Initiative.
I’ve been “doing journalism” for a long
time: since my late teens in Arizona. I’ve had
my own radio show. I’ve won press awards for
my newspaper and magazine writing.
Lori does a fi ne job laying down questions
to get to the heart of the initiative I am
helping the State of Oregon head up in
order to determine the reality of working
and struggling families in our county from
their point of view. She gets into background
questions, and looks for context not only for
the project I am involved with, but also dives
into my own narrative.
DEEP
DIVE
Social IQ
In one very elegant sense, Lori Arce-
Torres is establishing yet another layer of
her own social capital network — the very
essence of how communities and individuals
weather the storm of a tough economy and
limited resources.
One might say Lori is all about social
capital as the head of the Lincoln City
Chamber of Commerce.
She has only been at the helm of the
chamber for three years, but her life —
Lori with the 2019 Angels’ Ball Tree, “Be An Earth Angel” crafted by Lovell’s Burlworks from recycled
materials.
starting out in Blackfoot, Idaho, 56 years
ago, to today — is defi ned by real-world
links between groups and individuals. Her
networking acumen — with friends, family
networks, networks of former colleagues and
so on — must have been front and center of
how she landed the job in November 2016.
If there’s anything easy to understand
about a small-town chamber it is how its
unstated goal is to foster a divergent business
community, which in turn creates shared
norms, values and understandings in order to
support local businesses.
Lori and talk about the relationship of
businesses to their workers and, of course,
how consumers — who make up the third
leg of the “enterprise stool” — are the engine
driving a successful business.
Back to the numbers
Lori shows me the carving (Lovell’s
Burlworks) of the chamber’s tree for the
Angels Anonymous event held on Dec. 8.
Th e artwork is amazingly intricate but solid
— a wood carving depicting “angel’s wings
growing out of a twisted trunk.”
“Th e idea is people will take selfi es in front
of it,” she said, “acting as the trunk to the
wings. Our chamber tree is around the theme,
be an earth angel: Reduce, Reuse, Rejoice.”
Th e event in question, Th e Angels’ Ball, is
an $85-a-ticket black tie auction to serve the
poor in Lincoln City.
Th e idea is to help people in our
community in need by raising money from
dozens of business participants with their
own unique themes. Some of the gifts under
the chamber’s carving will be live plants and
ornaments designed and made by 4th grade
students at Sam Case — all from recycled
materials.
Okay, back to those numbers: In the
US, there are more than 30.2 million small
businesses with 500 or fewer employees
comprising 99.9 percent of all businesses.
Don’t think Amazon, Walmart or
McDonald’s — but rather imagine all those
hotels, restaurants and standalone businesses,
including those in strip malls, providing
goods and services to the very people who
make Lincoln City tick.
Supporting local businesses in turn
strengthens the very fabric of a community
through relationships with families
dependent upon work. Th is in turn weaves
a cultural, educational, recreational and
spiritual web that we all hope envelopes our
community in the form of public health,
safety and well-being.
Th e idea behind a group of 300 business
members with the chamber — all dues-
paying participants — is to facilitate both
networking opportunities and hands-on
economic development. Th e very thread
of how well these small businesses do
is predicated on the well-being of their
employees, Lori emphasizes.
Interestingly, when I ask her what she
wanted to be when she was growing up, fi rst
she said, “a singer . . . Barbara Streisand was
my mom’s favorite.” But then as she got older
growing up on a farm near Idaho Falls, she
decided, “I sort of like the idea of being an
activities director for a nursing home.”
She ended up regularly visiting her father
who was in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s
patients for eight years before he died.
Now fast forward — we are talking about
the three legs to the other stool challenging
young and not-so-old workers and families in
Lincoln City: lack of aff ordable housing, lack
of day care and lack of things to do.
One of the initiatives Lori is undertaking
is studying the idea of siting day care facilities
inside nursing facilities and retirement homes:
“It’s good for the residents to be around these
young children, and it helps our struggling
families continue to go to work and stay
here.”
She’s quick to point out how the chamber
is always evolving to support diff erent
businesses. She also professes how millennials
are not big into going to meetings. So new
tools are being developed to lure more
members and to gauge their businesses’ needs
and wants.
For now, though, her husband Joey (from
Puerto Rico), their 19-year-old track athlete
son Gabe (at Western Oregon University),
their two daughters Kandis (34, in
McKinleyville, California) and Kamile, 32 (in
Cloverdale), and now two recent additions —
grandchildren — will continue to grow Lori’s
social capital we have in the form of family
and friends.
Th e reader can tune into Lori interviewing
her own social capital network, “Chamber
Chat,” on Monday mornings from 8:30 to 9
am on KBCH-1400 AM.
•••
Read on, as Deep Dive continues at www.
oregoncoasttoday.com.
Paul Haeder is a writer living and working
in Lincoln County. He has two books coming out,
one a short story collection, “Wide Open Eyes:
Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non-fi ction
book, “No More Messing Around: Th e Good, Bad
and Ugly of America’s Education System.”
oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • January 17, 2020 • 7