Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's FLX Morning Tuesday, 840 and Jeff Shibley is here, he came in, Seneca County Chamber of Commerce, did you get my Zoom link on the email or did you just decide to brave it?
Jeff Shipley: I just decided to brave it, I don't live that far away from the studio and I wouldn't miss it Ted, I enjoy waking up with you.
Paul Szmal: Well I appreciate that, this will be our final visit together barring some fill in or something and we will start with the annual dinner and all those great awards for the small business and the non-profits, so who were our winners and how did the dinner go?
Jeff Shipley: Yeah, it's such a fun event, it's the largest event we'll do all year long at the chamber, at our chamber. The dinner was fantastic, the crowd sizes continue to swell each and every year which is great to see, everybody wants to be a part of it and it's just a fun night to share with community. And so this year we gave three awards out for our project of the year which went to Leo and Tom's Barbershop out in Waterloo, they sunk just about every penny they have into renovating a historic building to turn it into a barbershop and it's just a really neat experience now when you go into Leo and Tom's and have that as your story.
So Leo and Tom's was the project of the year, we gave a humanitarian award, we call it the Menzo Case Humanitarian Award because Menzo Case was somebody that just did so much for our community so we honor somebody in his name every year. And this year it was Michael Skaglione from Seneca Falls but he lives over in Geneva, he works in Geneva at the Finger Lakes Federal Credit Union and boy what a story Michael has just in terms of what he has done for this community, it's just truly inspiring to see some of the people that we have here in the Finger Lakes region and within our own communities that do so much, it's just so incredible and so inspiring and he gave a great speech, fired everybody up.
And then the business of the year, we give a business of the year away every year for outstanding achievements, the contributions that they make to our community and so this year it went to Sessler Companies and Sessler has had an absolutely remarkable year, they are under new ownership, well their generational family transition of ownership so now it's the younger generation that has taken over and boy have they got off to a heck of a start. They've acquired a business here in New York State, they expanded into North Carolina, South Carolina and they've just done so much to grow that business operation with their main headquarters being in Waterloo and the whole resort at Seneca Lake and that mini golf course that has brought so much joy to everybody that happened in 2024.
So we had a blast this year, we did previews every week of the concerts and it was so much fun talking to all those musicians. You know it's unbelievable and you get that type of experience other places when you go on vacation and you kind of take for granted that it's happening right in your own backyard and they have done such an outstanding job with that facility down at Samson State Park and all the concerts you said, the music series and the fireworks display that they have for the 4th of July, just incredible what they mean to our community and so it was a fun night to honor all of those award winners.
Paul Szmal: So before we get to some upcoming events I've been asking all our chamber people this, have you heard anything either anecdotally or hard facts about the holiday shopping season this year?
Jeff Shipley: So actually we have heard that the shopping season has been, I would say it was a little stronger than last year, I mean it was on par, it wasn't something that we saw a negative decrease in. We know we had a lot of visitors here, we had a tremendous volume of traffic, in Seneca County anyways, for the It's Wonderful Life festival which happened back in the early part of December and so it's been a pretty great run. We were, from a visitor standpoint, we were down through 2024 through March of 2024, it really started to pick up in April with the solar eclipse, you know the total solar eclipse started things but ever since April we have seen a steady increase in traffic year over year from 2023. So I mean we know that we've got the visitors that are excited about our area coming year round now too, I think that's another maybe surprise to some that people are coming here year round to experience what we have, but no it's for sure.
Paul Szmal: Now all these events we're going to talk about you can find them at discoversenica.com on the events calendar, but what do we have coming up?
Jeff Shipley: Yeah, so our Chamber of Commerce holds a monthly networking session, we call it business after hours and so we rotate throughout our community, throughout our membership so everybody can see and hear what's happening in different places and we're really excited in February, we're going to be going to Montezuma Winery out in Seneca Falls and they just opened a brand new tasting room.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I've been seeing that going up every time I go by saying I got to check this out.
Jeff Shipley: It's incredible, so we're going to welcome everyone out to Montezuma Winery the third Wednesday in February and showcase that beautiful new facility that they have there, so we're really looking forward to that. Our driver safety program as always is something that we are really, really excited to be able to offer that service to our community and we alternate between a two-day service and a one-day Saturday. It's a six-hour course, you have to complete all six hours to get your credits for it, so in February it's going to be the second week in February, a Wednesday and a Thursday and then in March it'll go back to a Saturday.
And then the other thing that we do at our chamber is we do an educational series and we call it Chamber University and so we are really, really excited to get the program kicked off for 2025, I can't believe I'm saying 2025 now, and we have a great program in store for everyone. I would highly encourage everyone to follow the senecachamber.org, that's our website at the Seneca County Chamber of Commerce. We're going to be working with Wegmans and they're going to be doing a wonderful series about women in leadership and business and so we cannot wait to have that program. We think that's going to be really popular and really informative for a lot of people.
Paul Szmal: So you talked earlier about people doing great things, OVID and the fire and the just immediate stepping up from the night of to somebody left their coffee shop open or something I heard and you know people bringing food to the firefighters and so my first question is has anybody heard definitively from the Big M ownership about rebuilding?
Jeff Shipley: So we've been in contact with OVID Big M, the ownership, right along. They are very much still processing things. They have a lot to sort through. We're helping assist them with some of the employee outreach and some of the making sure their employees have what they need to move forward in the immediate future. I think it's a little too early yet that they have they haven't made that that sort of decision but they made a significant contribution and commitment to our community so you know our fingers are crossed. Because one thing is for sure, that is now a food desert down in OVID. There is no really no place that you can get healthy food. Ithaca and Geneva pretty much, right?
Paul Szmal: Ithaca and Geneva, yep.
Jeff Shipley: And you know that's that's a problem and that's something that we have identified at our chamber at the Farm Bureau, working with the Farm Bureau, the local IDA and the county government is all committed to doing what we can to identify, advocate for a rebuild that includes a grocery store down there because it's so important and it's really it's the only place as you mentioned Ithaca or Geneva that the only place that visitors and we have an awful lot of them that stay on those short-term rentals on the lakes that's a that's the spot where they all come and stock up.
Paul Szmal: That's true you know it's really it's a hub for that whole area on that eastern side of Seneca Lake.
Jeff Shipley: Yeah, it really is. So that is a priority for all of the organizations that are working to help in this rebuild effort that is certainly a priority for us but yeah I know they've got their their hands full down there with the Over Big M ownership and we're doing everything we can to support them but you know you started this out Ted you hear so so often whenever there's a tragedy the first responders and people talking and giving credit to first responders I cannot begin to tell you how true that is until it kind of hits you you know and you're part of it. I mean guys are out there fighting that fire till their clothes literally freeze to their body and they have to pull them off the line and say go warm up.
Paul Szmal: Yeah yeah I mean you're seeing these these fire engines come back into the stations and they're completely frozen over and just think of what that kind of effort took that that really tragic night. So the first responders I mean my my hat's off to all of them there are so many volunteer fighter fighters throughout the region that were part of that response and I just can't say enough about how how they do what they do it is it is truly inspiring and outstanding and then the other thing is how the community came together for this response you know starting with obviously organizations like United Way you had them on my way into to work from Auburn but the Seneca County United Way sprung into action and they did such a fantastic effort they're still going through inventorying all the goods and they still need help trying to sort through all of the things.
Jeff Shipley: Yeah a dozen or two dozen organizations just immediately jumped in. And people you know the other thing is the people in the OVID community that are there were stories that were relayed to me about people taking in displaced individuals from the fire just into their own houses and in many cases people didn't know about it you know and and that was kind of a problem because we wanted to know where what happened to some of these folks but just the incredible outpouring of support and love just by taking these these individuals in there was a car donated for one of the women that lost their their car in it so just incredible story of and really shows you what a community is all about and that that is certainly the case down in OVID.
Paul Szmal: Well I want to be there when it comes back bigger and better than ever. Tell us about the efforts to bring this Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad corridor all through the state and hopefully through Seneca County.
Jeff Shipley: Yeah so we touched on this a little bit the last time I was here but ultimately this is going to be a 550 mile corridor stretching from New York City to Niagara Falls it really follows the Underground Railroad Trail in New York State goes through about 22 counties. Seneca County is one of them Ontario County is another one that we are making the connections and in fact last month in December the Seneca County Board of Supervisors just passed a resolution in support of the project. There is such a everybody well I shouldn't say everybody but a lot of people know about the women's rights movement in Seneca Falls and the suffrage movement what they don't know is the connection between abolitionism and the suffrage movement they were very closely related to each other and so there are a number of sites throughout Seneca Falls and Waterloo that are part of this Underground Railroad story and not just Seneca Falls and Waterloo but throughout our community in Seneca County north and south there are a tremendous amount of assets that we have that we are so excited to be able to showcase when we bring this trail to life and it's just another one of those marketing opportunities another way that you bring a different market into our community to experience what we have in the Finger Lakes and we are so excited to do so and right now we're going through you know a little bit of fundraising a lot of support gathering support letters of support and what not the trail itself we're hoping to open at the first quarter ish of 2026.
Paul Szmal: Okay we've talked a lot I most hesitate to call this niche tourism but accessibility let us about making sites accessible and a group called Wheel the World.
Jeff Shipley: So this started getting on my radar in a significant way a couple of years ago because our I our office which we are the tourism promotion agency for Seneca County we we field a lot of phone calls we get a lot of visitor inquiries throughout the year and we started noticing a trend of people looking for accessible accommodations people with with in a wheelchair for example people with some disabilities that that forces them to rely on locations being accessible to them and not everybody has the the accommodations to support that and so it really started getting on our radar in a big way and then our region our Finger Lakes Regional Tourism Council banded together and made a partnership with a group called Wheel the World and they are the foremost accessibility travel site that's out there in the in the world today and we partner with them and Seneca County is one of the initial counties we have gone in in a very big way in bringing this group out we're going to inventory the sites some of the biggest tourism sites and in our community we're going to inventory them we're going to identify where they are strong where they are weak we're going to make some recommendations for those businesses to get a little bit stronger and then we are going to promote in a significant way the assets that we have to experience here for that market the accessibility travel market and you know going through some of the stories and some of the trainings on this I mean it breaks my heart when I see some of these some of these people and hear some of their stories a lot of them like a tragic accident you know left them you know without the ability to walk necessarily so I got to jump in here because we're almost out of time and because we got started a little late because of the storm I just want to say thank you for your support of this program and the station over the years anytime you had anything newsworthy always made sure to share it with us and I know that'll go on with Paul and appreciate all the talks we've had thank you Ted thanks for your service always glad to help it's 855 now FLX morning
