Quotes of the Day:
“When we started [name of business withheld] in 2000, I joined the Chamber. What a waste of money!!! They did absolutely NOTHING for our business. When the wanted me to re-up, I said ‘no thanks, you folks weren’t interested in us until it was time to renew our membership, and then it was only to get my check!’
— Grand Junction business owner, name withheld
When I first came to town, I stopped in [at the GJ Chamber] to talk about the business community and orient myself. It was made painfully clear to me that 1. Restaurants are not at all ‘important’ businesses to this chamber;… 2. I’m not ‘the right type’ for anyone in there to even talk to. I should have filmed it, the scornful treatment I got in the Chamber was so bad.
I walked out of that office and never went back in.
—Grand Junction restaurant owner, March 18, 2022, from Facebook
Many Grand Junction area citizens and local business owners take exception to how the Grand Junction, Colorado Area Chamber of Commerce operates. Many citizens have purposefully boycotted chamber-owned businesses.
What has generated such a serious backlash against our own local chamber, which is supposed to be a helpful, well-liked entity that adds value to our town?
It’s because the Grand Junction Area Chamber is not a normal chamber of commerce.
First of all, the chamber portrays itself as the single most important political voice in town because it represents local businesses, yet only a small fraction of area businesses actually belong to the chamber, and according to the chamber’s own membership list, many of their members are from outside of the area. The “Grand Junction Area Chamber” has members in Denver, Arvada, Lakewood, Craig, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Glenwood Springs, Moab, Utah, Reno, Nevada, South Carolina, Houston, Texas, and even in Washington, D.C. Why should any company based on the front range or outside of Colorado have any say over Grand Junction’s local policies, issues or candidates?
Even worse, Grand Junction Chamber leaders have engaged in public intimidation and bigotry against minorities, bullied citizens and paid lip service to promoting locally-owned businesses while taking its own business out of town. Unlike other chambers, the Grand Junction Chamber does not truly fulfill its mandate to boost local small businesses. Rather, starting around 2012, the G.J. chamber became a partisan political group masquerading as a chamber of commerce. The G.J. Chamber financially supports poorly-vetted, wholly inappropriate candidates for local office, one of whom even pled guilty in open court to criminal activity. The G.J. chamber lobbies against the interests of hardworking Grand Junction area citizens, and supports short-sighted and harmful policies, many of which, like its support for large-scale, legalized gambling, go directly against the explicit wishes of the vast majority of citizens. In 2014, for example, the chamber supported Colorado Amendment 68, which would have legalized large-scale gambling in Mesa County, even though 70 percent of county voters opposed it and have strongly opposed similar gambling measures in the past. Even now, the G.J. chamber selectively promotes boom-and-bust industries that have well-established histories of seriously damaging our area’s economy and environment over and over, like oil and gas, coal, oil shale and uranium mining, over cleaner, safer, more stable and reliable economic development, like technical, manufacturing and clean energy industries.
How bad does a chamber of commerce have to be before its board and members take STEPS to make it better?
Apparently, incredibly bad.
This website reveals the dark side of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce in detail. If you have recently joined the Chamber, you need to know this information. All of the information in this website is on the record, documented and supported by published, authoritative references. Primary source documents are used as much as possible to substantiate statements made on this website, including but not limited to arrest reports, legal affidavits, chamber newsletters, original correspondence in the public realm, and local newspaper and TV news reports.
If you are a business owner thinking of joining the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, please read this site in its entirety first. If you have already joined, read the site to understand what you are buying into as a member, and to see how many citizens of this area view the G.J. Chamber. Sadly, the Chamber’s activities have angered, insulted and upset so many citizens and business owners for so long now that joining it could actually be detrimental to your business. The very existence for this site is evidence of that.
To find out why so many Grand Junction citizens take exception to the G.J. Area Chamber, read on.
DISCLAIMER: The Grand Junction Area Chamber has expressed concern that people will think this is their official website. It is not their official website. If it was, it wouldn’t be so darned critical of them. We respect your intelligence and believe you can figure that out for yourself.