Elgin Chamber dinner looks at numbers for 2011 business

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Updated: March 22, 2012 6:03PM

ELGIN — Numbers were on the agenda Tuesday night as the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce held its 104th annual dinner.

Those numbers, according to new Chamber President Carol Gieske, include her being the first woman to head the Elgin business organization. She replaces Leo Nelson, who retired from that post at the Chamber in December, after 11 years.

Nelson, however, has not completely stepped down from a leadership role at the Chamber. He has stayed on as a director of the Elgin Development Group, tasked as the economic development engine for the city of Elgin.

The two-year-old agreement between the city and the Chamber for economic development was on the city council’s committee-of-the-whole agenda Wednesday night as well. (See Page 4.)

In 2011, said Mike Shales, the Chamber’s 2012 board chairman, the Elgin Development Group can boast two successful projects — the move of Switzerland-based Bystronic Inc.’s North American headquarters to a location on Airport Road, and Pancor Construction & Development’s speculation building: a $49.6 million, 167,000-square-foot commercial and industrial building at 1385 Madeline Lane in the Randall Point Business Center.

Those two projects are set to bring in $345,000 in local property taxes to area government bodies, and an estimated $31 million in new economic activity, Shales said.

The spec building was something Elgin specifically needed, Nelson said following Tuesday night’s dinner, held in the Grand Victoria Casino’s ballroom.

Elgin, and the Chicago metro area, are running out of usable and available manufacturing space, he said. What is left is also in outdated buildings, he said.

“Old buildings don’t do it any more” for manufacturing, Nelson said.

The Chamber reached out to local builders, which led to the city government waiving fees for the space and the spec building’s construction. “It wasn’t cash, but waiving some building and permit fees,” Nelson said. “The city put it on a fast-track review process.”

There are few if any speculation buildings — constructed before a tenant or tenants are secured — going up in the region, Gieske noted.

She also encouraged businesses to take a look at the new Chamber of Commerce and Elgin Economic Development websites, slated to go live on Feb. 29.

The two sites, www.ElginChamber.com and www.elgindevelopment.org, will kick off with a daylong open house at the Elgin Chamber of Commerce offices on DuPage Court.

The development website will be “our window to the world,” Nelson said, and will offer four different languages to Web visitors — Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, German and Spanish.

“We have visitors from all over the world,” Nelson said.