Leander chamber plans arts festival to attract visitors, promote local businessesTo prepare for future growth, the Greater Leander Chamber of Commerce is changing its name and mission to include a visitors center to bring more people into the city.


The chamber’s new name is the Greater Leander Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Center and although the chamber has already been coordinating much of the city’s tourism promotion, the organization wanted to formalize the name and effort, chamber President Bridget Brandt said. City officials and community organizations indicated a need for a designated visitor’s center to the chamber, she said.

“We felt like becoming the visitor’s center … and dedicating the title and time and effort to it would actually yield a better result,” Brandt said.

To keep the city’s personality and culture in tact in the future after Leander’s population has grown, Brandt said the chamber is working to create the desire for people to live, work and play in the city. One of the chamber’s efforts is to host the Old Town Street Festival in May on North Brushy Street.

“If you look at a lot of big cities that grew up that fast, they don’t have things that make them feel like a community,” she said. “It’s because of the challenge of getting something like that started. For us we get the privilege of starting [to address growth] when we’re still a smaller city so that we can have the ability to grow it when we are a bigger city.”

The rebranding also means a few operational changes for the chamber, Brandt said. The visitors center will operate as part of the chamber’s budget, and proceeds from the festival will go toward funding the center. The goal, Brandt said, is to eventually hire someone to manage the visitors center, which could also plan and host several events throughout the year to help bring visitors to Leander, she said.

“There is a huge push to draw people into Leander to not just live … but give people something to do here,” she said. “We love the way that Leander feels. We know that Leander is going to continue to grow. … My goal and the goal of this organization is to maintain that feel when Leander [has] 70,000 to 200,000 people. The way you do that is by starting to create that desire for people to be here today.”

Craig Stluka, chairman of the chamber board, said there is no plan to construct a visitors center or designate a space for one, however it could be a topic of discussion in the future.

“The biggest message that we want to put out there for the rebranding is that our goal for this year is to ... promote the role of the current and future visitor’s center,” he said. “[We want to] make people aware that the Leander chamber is here to really promote our local businesses.”