presidents desk

From the President’s Desk (March 2023)

Looking Forward to Morristown Landing’s Opening

presidents desk

As I drive by the west side of town, I’m asked daily by my children “when will the community center open?” The response they get is “soon.” I want to dig a little deeper than “soon” here and explain the value to the Chamber and the community.

I was spoiled growing up in the metropolis of Newport. I’ve never known a time without a community center with an Olympic size pool, workout facility, gym and game room. I’m not sure why, but it never struck me that another community wouldn’t have a facility like this. In my mind, it was just understood that every community had one, and they were all likely better than the one I grew up with. When I moved to Morristown 11 years ago, I was a little surprised to see the overall development of our community but somehow we lacked such an important piece of quality of life and community development. Professionally, it became even harder as we would have a large industrial visitor in town and they would inevitably ask, “where is your community center?” I never said we don’t have one, I would always say that we are working on one.

With community growth in business, industry and housing comes a greater need for quality of life amenities and our city and county has done an amazing job with our park system and now with the opening of the Morristown Landing forthcoming. It makes me proud to live in a community where quality of life is valued and invested in by our leaders, and we look forward to showing this new facility off to our business and industry so they can utilize it as a human resource tool as well as a tool to support their business!