Everett Chamber of Commerce Back From the Dead

Everett Chamber of Commerce in 1902 (credit: Everett Library)

The original Chamber of Commerce in Everett was incorporated on June 17, 1892, two years after Everett was established, and one year before the city was officially incorporated.

After a 119 year run, the Everett Chamber of Commerce was dissolved and merged into the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County in 2011.

For the past 13 years, Everett has been without a chamber of its own. A couple of months ago, Everett staff presented the idea of bringing a chamber back with Covid recovery grant money (from ARPA). We wondered if the chamber should return?

The Everett City Council thinks so. Last night, they voted unanimously to dedicate $600,000 to the resurrection, starting with $50,000 to hire a consultant to help set it up correctly.

Expect a 2025 launch of the Everett Chamber of Commerce and the $550,000 in seed money to be spread over 2-4 years to help staff, market, and promote the chamber to the Everett business community.

The old Everett Chamber of Commerce site was pulled down several hours after the council approved its funding.

At one point, the Everett Chamber of Commerce had 700 paid members. The new chamber will hope for similar numbers to help it become self-sustainable long-term.

Despite being shut down for 13 years, the old chamber website had still been up and indexed in Google until several hours after the Council approved the funding on Wednesday.

Whoever owns or controls the domain took it down by blocking all access to the site. When looking at it earlier this week, I had noticed the EverettChamber.com site was hacked by a gift basket company in Australia. We’ll see if the city can get their hands on the website, or if the new chamber will need a new domain.