UConn Women’s Basketball Coach Biz Breakfast Guest of Honor

The month of March has begun amidst brisk activity at the in the form of council and division meetings as well as activities. We had our usual great turnout at the chamber’s meeting last week on Thursday, with the business leaders of Middletown’s downtown area, Mayor Daniel Drew as well as many of the city’s directors. 

Thanks to for hosting this event.

The meeting included discussion on signage at the South Green as well as the Veterans Green on Washington Street. We are all on the same page as it relates to the ability for the public to post signs for various events and activities around town. We do not want clutter at our parks with signs of all different sizes and shapes and uniform guidelines must be followed.

Our local veterans groups are direct stakeholders in these parks as the parks are the home for many monuments that honor our local servicemen and women. I would like to praise all of our veterans as well as Phil Cacciola for working cooperatively with the city so that these parks continue to serve as a showcase for not only these servicepeople, but also so they can be utilized by the citizens of Middletown.

There was also a productive discussion with Jodi Heslin and Debbie Kendzior of the . I mentioned that mail delivery has been an ongoing issue with our member organizations and we were able to have a productive dialogue on Thursday. 

Basically, our group was able to voice its concerns directly to Debbie, Middletown’s Postmaster, and Jodi, who is manager of post office operations.  We all realize that economic times have forced everyone to do more with less.  However, mail delivery continues to be very important for our business community.

Cooperation is also a theme when it comes to the relationship that the chamber has with Connecticut Department of Transportation. Every month, DOT sends some of its top leaders to the chamber to provide an update on the construction/repair. This job is certainly a thankless one and it takes true commitment to attend these meetings each month and answer rapid-fire questions from the group.

Ken Fargnoli from DOT has done a great job each month to provide updates and answer any and all questions. Also Middletown, Fire Chief Gary Ouellette and Portland Fire Chief Bob Shea have done a great job in keeping the emergency management subcommittee moving forward, in lockstep with DOT.

The Arrigoni Bridge committee met last March 2 and DOT has worked hard to keep the project schedule ().

This week, the chamber, in partnership with Midd-Shore Real Estate School, will begin a series of continuing education real estate seminars on March 7 with the program Lunch & Learn: Short Sales 101. Classes will continue on March 20, 21, 27 and April 5. We offer these classes every year at the chamber as a service to our realtors, so as to assist them in obtaining their mandatory continuing education credits.

Next week will be a busy one when we welcome UConn Women’s Basketball Head Coach Geno Auriemma on March 12 and then Speaker of the House Chris Donovan at a special legislative event the next day. It is very rare to get the head coach of an elite program, like UConn, to a morning business meeting while his or her team is in season.

Coach Auriemma will speak to our chamber on the day in which the NCAA announces the 2012 women’s basketball tournament seedings. The meeting was electric last year and will only be more lively this year. We expect to sell this event out by the end of the week and have a standing-room-only crowd on Monday.

To continue with a March Madness theme, our Young Professionals’ Alliance will host a March Madness event for the opening round games on March 15. The group will meet at the chamber and venture out to different restaurants in downtown Middletown to catch the action. There will be more on this event, which is the first of its kind for the chamber, to come.

For information, contact Matt Fraulino at (860) 347-6924 or email matthew@middlesexchamber.com.