Ribbon Cuttings a Regular Sight in Downtown Kent

Last year, the Kent Area Chamber of Commerce and Kent Mayor Jerry Fiala welcomed 19 new businesses to the city — mostly in downtown Kent.

By the end of May, the chamber had already cut the ribbon on 11 new businesses that again most of which opened in new spaces downtown.

Lori Wemhoff, executive director of the Kent chamber, said she already has four more ribbon-cutting ceremonies scheduled through July and is cautiously optimistic the city could top last year’s number.

“I feel pretty confident that we can break (19) if not get very close this year,” she said. “I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch.”

The ribbon cuttings are a free courtesy provided by the chamber and the mayor, and published here in Wemhoff’s blog on Kent Patch, to welcome new businesses to the city whether they belong to the chamber or not.

The boost in new stores opening can be credited directly to the more than $100 million in redevelopment ongoing downtown that has added hundreds of thousands of square feet of new commercial and retail space.

Meanwhile, growth at the chamber has paralleled that of downtown with membership rising steadily the past four years annually.

In 2009, the chamber had 176 members. By 2010, 245 businesses and groups had joined. In 2011, membership grew even further to 255. And by the end of 2012 the chamber had 267 members and counting.

It didn’t stop there. As of the end of May, the Kent chamber has 276 members.

“So we are at 100 more members to … date than we had three and-a-half years ago,” Wemhoff said.

She attributes the membership growth to more than just the availability of new business space.