In this episode of Business LO, Heather Graves Ramsey, owner of Coach to Brilliance, interviews Matt Evans, the Chief of Economic Development and Business Research at the Lake Oswego Chamber. They discuss the Chamber's role in economic development, business trends, and its relationship with the city. Key topics include the status of office spaces post-COVID, the growth of new businesses, and the importance of buying local. Plus, Chamber CEO Liz Hartman updates listeners on insider information with What You Need to Know in LO- upcoming events and programs.
City of Lake Oswego:
Map of Business Districts | City of Lake Oswego
Business in Lake Oswego | City of Lake Oswego
Starting a Business in Lake Oswego | City of Lake Oswego
Home-based Businesses | City of Lake Oswego
Zoning & Permits | City of Lake Oswego
Signs and Signage | City of Lake Oswego
Business Assistance Business | City of Lake Oswego
Economic Development Strategy and Resource Plan | City of
Tree Lighting Sponsors – Nicoletta’s Table, Gracious Care Hospice, Travel and Cruise Desk, On Point Community Credit Union, Lakeside Heating and Cooling
Ironlight - Elevated Event Venue | Lake Oswego, OR
Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s Marcia Kies - Real Estate Broker in Lake
Oswego, OR | Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty
Family Law Attorney in Lake Oswego - Fischer Family Law
AY Meisner Anastasia Yu Meisner
Lake Oswego Review - Lake Oswego Review | News, Sports & Community in Lake Oswego, Oregon |
Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce | Business Leadership Development
LIZ HARTMAN:: [00:00:00] This is Business LO, a podcast by the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce, which connects, educates, advocates, and champions, our business community. We have nearly 500 members from international corporations to home-based businesses, and we serve them all. Each episode of Business LO gives insider information to the local business community and the neighbors who support them.
LIZ HARTMAN:: And now let's talk business LO.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Today is November 4th, 2025, and this episode will be published on December 1st, 2025. And we're sitting down with the Lake Oswego Chamber's very own Matt Evans. He's the chief of economic development and business research, and he also handles membership services as well. We're going to discuss economic development and Matt has some very interesting statistics on new businesses, not just chamber members, but all LO businesses.
MICHELLE ODELL:: [00:01:00] Running the interview is our perpetual queen of positivity. Heather Graves Ramsey, owner of Coach to Brilliance. She specializes in executive coaching and leadership development, and of course, everyone's favorite chamber, CEO. Liz Hartman has the insider scoop with what you need to know in lo. And I'm Michelle Odell, and let's get going.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Heather. Let's get going. Yeah. Positiveness. I'm gonna go with
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: it. Yeah. I'm actually really interested in what we're talking about today. 'cause I think even as a board member sometimes it's, it's not totally clear all the things that you do, and I know there's so much that goes on behind the scenes, but if you can help us with.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: You're the really the link that links us with the city as, and so I would love to learn a little bit more about what you're doing, how the chamber is working with the city in order to help with the economic development piece.
MATT EVANS:: Sure. Yeah. Just a little history. The city previously had an economic development department.
MATT EVANS:: It closed it [00:02:00] down 10 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that. Realized over time that they had become a little bit disconnected from what was happening in the business community. And it's not hard to understand as an elected official. You probably want to know what's happening in the business community.
MATT EVANS:: We're fortunate in Lake Oswego in that we have a city council that is made up of a number of small business owners. So they're gonna kind of instinctively understand what they should or shouldn't be messing around with as far as regulations and the code goes with regard to business. But the city decided to develop a program where there would be some economic development pieces, and Liz worked with them to, I think, to help develop that program and then also to bring the chamber in as the deliverer to the city of.
MATT EVANS:: What they were looking for as far as economic development goes, and we have a [00:03:00] fairly wide ranging portfolio. It's not super specific. Which is valuable to me 'cause it means that if I see something interesting I can go look at it as opposed to not being allowed to go look at it or something like that.
MATT EVANS:: The city is very intellectually curious. The, the staff and the city counselors are all very intellectually curious about what's happening in this city, and that's a real value, I think, to the voters and residents of. The city of Lake Oswego. So we look at all kinds of things. We look at new businesses, we look at existing businesses.
MATT EVANS:: We try to find out where we can about things like employment. Are people looking to hire additional employees? Are they having problems finding certain kinds of employees? We also look at some of the demographic issues around businesses and, and the city in general. How many businesses do we have? What kind of businesses do we have?
MATT EVANS:: Are there areas where we could develop [00:04:00] additional businesses? We're also a resource under, under our agreement with the city for businesses that are. Seeking perhaps to locate in Lake Oswego or businesses that are already in Lake Oswego that might wanna find a bigger space to do their business in. And so we keep track of available properties, available office spaces.
MATT EVANS:: Lake Oswego doesn't have a lot of industrial or manufacturing property, but sometimes a, a warehouse will come open and we'll be able to promote that a little bit in case there's someone that's looking for an additional space like that. So it's a, it's a pretty wide ranging portfolio and I'm, I'm really pleased to.
MATT EVANS:: To be part of it.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: It's such a great service and we, and you can't run a city and not know what's going on. And so I love that they realize that and can see, and I feel like the Chamber also, not only with the data portion, but also just in general, we're out there, we're talking to those businesses and so we can be a bit of a temperature gauge for the [00:05:00] city on what's, what some of those pieces are.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: What's coming to mind is trends. So what are some of, of the. The trends. I know you mentioned office space and stuff like that. Maybe start there, but if, if there's other trends, we'd love to hear those too.
MATT EVANS:: Well, there's something really interesting going on in office space in general, if you, anybody that's followed the headlines knows that after COVID, there was a real rush to the work at home movement where office space, people didn't want to go into office space anymore.
MATT EVANS:: They wanted to stay home, and we found out that people can work from. From anywhere if they have the right kind of a job. So you were no longer sort of tied to any geographic location? Well, that's not surprisingly, had some follow on effects within the, the economy where you've seen office buildings that you know.
MATT EVANS:: Previously were extremely valuable. Suddenly have their value cut by a third. You've had occupancy rates for office space and some jurisdictions plummet, and [00:06:00] that's, that has affected also other businesses in the area. People, when they work in an office downtown, maybe they go out to lunch, maybe they have some coffee, maybe they go out afterwards to have a drink or or dinner or whatever.
MATT EVANS:: If you're not in your previous office, maybe that's not happening anymore. And so there's been a, a general kind of negative effect of this. Now there's a little bit of a reversal going on in that people are starting to now, in some cases, demand that their employees come back to the office when that's necessary.
MATT EVANS:: Personally, I don't see us returning to full on a full occupancy on office employment all the time.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Yeah.
MATT EVANS:: Yeah. So. That's one of the things that we look at is office vacancy rates, both in downtown Lake Uswe go and out in the Cruise Way area. And I can tell you that our office space is healthier than some other areas around the metro.
MATT EVANS:: The vacancy rate in downtown is about four point half percent. [00:07:00] Which is small and very small number. I was, I say what?
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: What's a normal,
MATT EVANS:: yeah, yeah. It's, that's way, way below. And for example, cruise Way Meadows, which is a different kind of office space than we have in downtown, is about 24% or 26%, depending on, 'cause it's
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: larger business.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: They have more, more employees, that kind of thing. Whereas the spaces downtown seem a little smaller.
MATT EVANS:: Right. As you can imagine, that creates a tremendous amount of competition for spaces in downtown Lake Oswego, which is one of the reasons why it's a little more expensive than some other places might be.
MATT EVANS:: Mm-hmm. To locate. Mm-hmm. But that doesn't seem to have impacted the formation of business very much at all in like Oswego.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Tell me more about that.
MATT EVANS:: Sure. Well, I'm, I'm pleased to tell you that through the first 10 months of 2025, we've had 275 new businesses register with the city of Lake Oswego. Now, that's a gross [00:08:00] number, not a net number.
MATT EVANS:: There are businesses that have closed down, left like us. We go in recent months, but we have a, a very vibrant and healthy. Growth in new businesses, people wanting to try to make a go of it in Lake Oswego, which is where you wanna be. Yeah. Obviously you don't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: be anywhere else.
MATT EVANS:: You don't want, you don't want businesses closing and no new businesses opening up. So that's been a very, very positive and we track that on a regular basis. We hold events. Quarterly for all of the new business licensees in the city and bring them into a, a kind of a network, a mini networking, if you will, where they can learn more, not only about the Chamber of Commerce, although it's not a join the chamber event.
MATT EVANS:: But also learn more about how the city works with business. And Megan Phelan, the assistant city manager, has been very generous with her time. She's shown up at, I think every one of these when she [00:09:00] could show up. Yeah. To talk with the business folks that show up. And the, the other good thing about it, the networking piece of it that's interesting is you have a room full of people.
MATT EVANS:: And we had 15, I think last week here at the office, who are all kind of at the same place. In their business lives, so they have a ton in common and can discuss problems they might be having with other people that may have, may be facing the same problem, may have already solved that problem for their business.
MATT EVANS:: So there's a real opportunity for them to get to know each other in that way. I
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: love it. So every new business is invited. They should be looking out for that invitation. Absolutely. But I've attended before and I've attended a lot of them and I actually have learned a ton every time about the city, about even the Chamber too.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: And I feel like I could be considered an expert at the Chamber. And so I, I think they're really great events for new people to just understand what their resources are and how to get those resources as well. Well,
MATT EVANS:: and we, you know, we learn things too. It's like, did, what [00:10:00] difficulties did they have in sort of spooling up.
MATT EVANS:: Yeah. To the point where they're ready to launch their business and are there places we might be able to be involved to help smooth over some of those rough spots?
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about, there's been more businesses, and I'm curious from last year or the years past, is that number. Much, much greater.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Is it like 10% greater? Is it, no,
MATT EVANS:: it's, it's about the same, I would say. Nice. Okay. Which is good. I mean, currently there's a ton of uncertainty in the economy.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Mm-hmm.
MATT EVANS:: So, you know, the fact that you're even treading water is a positive. Mm-hmm. And we, we haven't seen much of a fall off in important area.
MATT EVANS:: In fact, we've seen an increase in payrolls for businesses located in Lake Oswego. So that's. Obviously very positive with the same number of businesses, we're still increasing payroll,
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: and so they're either growing or paying more. I don't know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
MATT EVANS:: Starting a business is an incredibly difficult undertaking, [00:11:00] and you see that every place.
MATT EVANS:: It has nothing to do with any local issues. It's not like as we, it's this how it goes. Yeah. It's just hard. I mean, you have to have the right idea at the right time for the right product or service that you're wanting to offer. And it's, and the right people work
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: in it too. Exactly. That's sometimes the the case.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: And I do feel like the people that come in and use those resources tend to do really well. Mm-hmm. So we've talked a little bit about closures and openings. Is there anything else there that's important for us to cover?
MATT EVANS:: One of the things I would just encourage listeners on is the whole buy local idea.
MATT EVANS:: So one of the ways to keep a business from closing that you like is to utilize the business.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Yeah.
MATT EVANS:: So, you know, we really encourage people to think about that as they're looking at whatever purchase it might be that they're interested in. They should think about is there a local. Business that provides this service or provides this product that I could use rather than driving to some other community entirely to [00:12:00] purchase it, or worse yet in, in terms of local business, ordering it over the internet, which is of course a giant competitor.
MATT EVANS:: To any business that provides a product, particularly think about how you can be community minded in that way and you know, think globally, but shop locally.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Our city really does know and understand the importance of having business because when you have thriving businesses, you have a thriving community, right?
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: We have all the different components, the education, the safety, but business is a huge part of that and it does help bring in the people that we want to have here.
MATT EVANS:: Absolutely. I think we have a very healthy office environment. It's. We have low vacancy rates, and there's, the only question I have sort of for in the longer term is I know that it, in other jurisdictions, there are leases that companies have for office space that they can't afford to get out of.
MATT EVANS:: Mm-hmm. And so they're, they have no, no one working at the [00:13:00] building. Mm. But they can't, it's more expensive for them to get out of a lease than just pay the lease cost for the next. 16 months or eight months or whatever it is, did know that. Okay.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Yeah. So
MATT EVANS:: the question then is gonna be, do we have some of that here out in, in the Cruise way, Meadows area?
MATT EVANS:: And are there gonna be businesses that are gonna end up moving? That we currently list as a business in a building,
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: right? So it might be more, more than the 24% or whatever, right?
MATT EVANS:: Yeah. And so that the question is gonna be how many new tenants can we bring in to fill up any office space that comes available?
MATT EVANS:: Well, now I will also say we've had very positive. Interest in buildings in that area. We had both directors Mortgage and Hoffman Construction purchase buildings mm-hmm. In that part of town. What, what we at the chamber refer to as the West End, which includes Meadows and Crews and Center Point and Westlake and Bangy Road.
MATT EVANS:: So it, it's obvious that there is interest and demand in [00:14:00] locating in that area. Yeah. You know, despite whatever's going on in the general office market. That's been a very positive thing
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: and people have been moving here, so Yes. Or like companies have been moving their yes. Businesses here, so that's correct.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: That's, that's always a good, a good sign too.
MATT EVANS:: If you do business in Lake Oswego, you can be located here, you can be located somewhere else, but want to do business here, you need to be licensed through the city of Lake Oswego. Now, I will say that not every business even located in Lake Oswego is licensed with the city.
MATT EVANS:: This city primarily runs on a complaint based system where they don't have people going out to try to find people who are violating this or that code. They respond to the public calling in and saying, Hey, by the way, you know, this guy's got a sign that shouldn't be there, or whatever it might be. If you look at the state of Oregon's corporation list, they have [00:15:00] about a thousand more businesses.
MATT EVANS:: And that they say are located in our two zip codes here, 9 7 0 3 4 9 7 0 3 5. Then have active business licenses. So the question becomes, where are those businesses and why don't they have business licenses? Now it's possible that they just don't know that they're supposed to have one. That's right. You know, there's a lot of
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: home-based businesses that may not even know.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Absolutely.
MATT EVANS:: Yep. No, that's exactly right. And we have a, we have a tremendous number of home-based businesses. I think there's more than 500. In Lake Oswego.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: That That are licensed?
MATT EVANS:: Yes. That are licensed. Yeah. And then I'm sure there are others. There have to be that, that just don't know. So it's not a malfeasance or anything on their part, it's just ignorance of, of what they need to Yeah.
MATT EVANS:: Accomplish there.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Okay. Well, I am curious about what types of businesses we have, small, large, if there's a particular industry or two that are striking here in Lake O.
MATT EVANS:: Well, I, I can tell you that Lake Ogo is a small [00:16:00] business community, over 97% of. The businesses in this city have 50 or fewer employees. Now you typically will see small business defined as a hundred or fewer.
MATT EVANS:: That's almost everybody at which I guess 97% is almost everybody anyway, but we have 97%. Of our businesses are small businesses now. So there's another good connection with the city council on it because they're small business owners. They're, they understand, oh, okay, we know what they're going through, so we're gonna be careful when we come out with additional regulations or what have you.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: What are the types of businesses that we're, we
MATT EVANS:: have one of the largest categories has to do with construction, either commercial or residential. Construction or remodeling or businesses that service them, it's, it's almost 10% of the licensed businesses have some connection. [00:17:00] So you know, like an HVAC contractor or something like that.
MATT EVANS:: But also the people that do the actual construction of commercial buildings or residential buildings. They're one of the big ones. Not surprisingly, we have plenty of doctors and dentists and people, other people in the healthcare field, particularly mental health. We have a very strong group of firms in Lake Oswego that are trying to help deal with mental health.
MATT EVANS:: Questions. Obviously lots of restaurants, lot tons of retail businesses, particularly in the downtown area along Boones Ferry. And so yeah, we have, we, we have a very vibrant business community with lots of different kinds of businesses located here.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Do the nonprofits, I'm assuming, have to get their business license as well?
MATT EVANS:: They do.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: What's the layout of nonprofit category? Like how many of those do we have total? I
MATT EVANS:: believe we have about. 53 or something like that total. And there's obviously tons of need and people recognize the need and they're servicing it.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: So we have [00:18:00] the home-based businesses, a lot of small businesses.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: How many total do we have in the city?
MATT EVANS:: Almost 2000.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Wow.
MATT EVANS:: Have business licenses in Lake Swe. Right.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: So that, and then there's another potential of the thousand, you know, that are listed on the, on the state sites.
MATT EVANS:: Right. You know, lots of business management consulting firms, plenty of financial firms. I mean, you're all aware, we have wealth management, some really excellent wealth management firms.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: We do really have like a wide mix of the retail pieces and, and like you said, the office businesses,
MATT EVANS:: anything you want, you're likely to be able to find it. Here.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Yeah. How many people live and work here? Out of the people that work here, are they living here? Are they commuters?
MATT EVANS:: They're almost all commuters.
MATT EVANS:: I think. I believe it's about 75% of the folks that work in Lake Oswego live someplace else. And interestingly enough, the same is true of. People that live here, they typically don't work here in Lake Oswego. They travel to [00:19:00] one of our surrounding communities for their job. Primarily Portland. That's the largest percentage.
MATT EVANS:: Yeah. But they're everywhere. Working for, for me, for government that informs decisions on things like transportation. If, if we've got all these people that are coming into town and all these people that are going out of town every single day of the week on the workdays, we probably need to think about that.
MATT EVANS:: How are we gonna get those people in? How are we gonna get others out? It's obviously mostly personal automobiles at the moment. We don't have. Particularly positive trim service to the area. One of the things that's happening, I'm kind of excited about is some of the new affordable housing units that are going in down on Boones Ferry Road, and the question is gonna be whether or not we can help those fill with people who work here.
MATT EVANS:: Which would be a real benefit to the businesses in Lake Oswego rather than they're trying to find employees who are willing to travel here [00:20:00] to work. People could afford to live here and work here. That would be a real positive, I think, for business.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Absolutely. What am I not asking you that I should?
MATT EVANS:: Maybe where we could improve things? Yeah. I would say that the one area that we could improve is to look at something like an incubator site for light manufacturing. Businesses. We have a really fascinating business that's located just down the, down the street here that uses a 3D printer to make a device that allows you to monitor.
MATT EVANS:: If you've got a elderly parent or some other person that needs they, you need to check in on a regular basis. They use this 3D printer and they create these devices that allow that to happen. So you don't need like. Giant industrial parks or anything like that, right? You just need an appropriate space.
MATT EVANS:: I've talked to commercial real estate agents that say what you guys should look at, places where they can, it can be really small [00:21:00] and not very expensive, where they can kind of get things. Kicked off. Okay. And do kind of almost like a proof of concept idea for them.
LIZ HARTMAN:: Yeah. Matt, you know the one business that we hear about that we don't have is men's ready to wear clothes?
LIZ HARTMAN:: Oh yeah. We have, that's, we have special clothes, but there are no men's ready to wear clothes in Lake Oswego.
MATT EVANS:: Well, you told me, Liz, the old joke used to be, you can't buy a pair of men's slacks in Lake Oswego or something like that. You
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: can't, we just have stuff for women. All right. Well maybe we need to get on that.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: That's important. We have a lot of men here too. Absolutely. We don't wanna discriminately shopping wise.
MATT EVANS:: Yes, indeed.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Okay. We're business friendly for women, so yeah. What is the percentage of, I feel like there's a lot of women owned businesses, but what's the percentage?
MATT EVANS:: It's very significant. We have almost 500 businesses that are owned by women.
MATT EVANS:: Wow. 75 of those are, are minority women. And the amazing thing about this statistic is it's not a complete list because the city did not start asking for this information until 2021. [00:22:00] Businesses that are older that have been around a while and registered previously with the city, they don't catch up later, unfortunately.
MATT EVANS:: Mm-hmm. We've encouraged them to consider doing that so that we have. A full list. Yeah. But nevertheless, since in five years, four and a half years, we've had 500 women owned businesses. That's great. Come to Lake Oswego.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: What makes Lake Oswego so women friendly?
MATT EVANS:: Some of it's the safety piece I would say.
MATT EVANS:: Where you're not worried about some of the things you might be worried about in other jurisdictions as far as your personal safety or your business safety goes. Mm-hmm. It has also become, because of the internet, much easier to run a business out of your house. And we talked about home base businesses previously.
MATT EVANS:: If you need to stay home, if. Kids are under school age or you need to be there when they return home from school. It's easy to run a business outta your house over the internet. Yeah. And I think that has helped to diversify that quite [00:23:00] a bit
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: and people move here for the schools, so that makes sense. Sure.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Too. Like ly people who are in interested in still doing stuff, but still being available. One question that I would like to ask, thinking of leasing, I'm a business, I'm leasing, what are some things that I, length of leases and or what should I be asked? Or looking for if I'm looking to come lease here.
MATT EVANS:: Sure. Yeah. I think one of the real things you need to know, especially if you're looking to lease in downtown Lake Oswego, there's very little reason why any landlord would want to cut you any kind of a break. When you've got a 4% vacancy rate, you don't have demand high. Yeah. Have to worry about it. Yeah.
MATT EVANS:: Yeah. We've heard stories of businesses that whose leases have come up for renewal and the landlord has insisted on a 10 year lease.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: Wow.
MATT EVANS:: That's a big commitment. Now in the, in this particular case, that company could probably. Realize, well, we're probably gonna be here in 10 years, so it's not, they wouldn't not do it just because of the length of the [00:24:00] thing.
MATT EVANS:: But that's a big commitment.
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: That is,
MATT EVANS:: that's the main caution I would have about it, is you have to understand that landlords are looking to lock people up. And some of this is an outgrowth of COD where a lot of people in went out of business. A lot of people didn't come back and so forth, and so they're.
MATT EVANS:: The landlords are trying to figure that out. Yeah. I don't know if it's how long that's gonna last, but right now that appears to be kind of the trend is that we're seeing requests for much longer leases than people are used to having to sign.
LIZ HARTMAN:: But that's not saying there aren't still five year leases.
LIZ HARTMAN:: No. Right. Yeah.
MATT EVANS:: It's just something you need to be aware.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Well, thank you Matt. Thank you so much for being here. I see you all the time at the chamber office. You're a delight.
MATT EVANS:: Thank you. It's, it's a lot of fun. I'm enjoying myself a great deal. Oh good.
MICHELLE ODELL:: That's, and it's probably 'cause you get to work with Liz every day.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Yeah,
MATT EVANS:: absolutely. No question about it.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Well, thank you so much. Alright, Liz. It's time. I mean, we're in December already. I can't believe it. Let's talk about what we need to know
LIZ HARTMAN:: in lo. [00:25:00] Thank you, Michelle. Let's start out with reflecting on the tree lighting, and we are really thrilled to thank the businesses that made this possible.
LIZ HARTMAN:: That was Nicoletta's Table CLA On Point Community Credit Union, Lakeside Heating and Cooling, and Gracious Care Hospice. Then we need to congratulate Travel and Cruise Desk on 60 years in Lake Oswego. They were also a bronze sponsor for the tree lighting. We have the holiday party coming up, up at the iron light, and thank you to Iron Light and Beacon for putting this party on.
LIZ HARTMAN:: It's Wednesday, December 10th from five to 8:00 PM Your $50 fee covers your appetizers, music, and a glass of wine, and every additional glass is $5. We already have sponsors beacon and Iron Light, but we also have Marsha Keys, ay Meisner, and Fisher Family Law to help keep our costs low. This is a great party and it is beautiful at the top of Iron Light.
LIZ HARTMAN:: Now is the time to [00:26:00] plan your marketing for 2026. We have so many members available to help you get a new headshot, a new corporate logo, a refresh on your website. Or just great consultation on social and print media. You can go to the Chamber website and pull up the directory. And then networking is a great way to know other business owners and like Oswego, we'll continue on Fridays nearly to the end of the year in December, but mark your calendar for Friday, January 9th when you can learn all about how to network.
LIZ HARTMAN:: It's a multi chamber event with the Tiger and Tualatin Chambers of Commerce, and you can watch the newsletter for more information. And at the very end of all this, you've already heard Matt talk about shopping local. We have the Lake Oswego review with the whole shop local campaign through December. So don't forget Love Lake Oswego and Shop Local.
LIZ HARTMAN:: Yes. Come join us for the Mayor's business breakfast. It's on Friday, January 30th. You will need reservations for that one. It did sell [00:27:00] out last year. We can take up to a hundred people for this one, and it is a great way to hear about what. The mayor and the city are thinking about for business in 2026. A lot of you know that the city puts their priorities together, and our city council has a number of business people on city council.
LIZ HARTMAN:: They do pay attention to what's going on in the business community, and it's a great opportunity to see some of the folks from the city who make those decisions. And as Matt mentioned earlier. They are wonderful to work with. So if you wanna meet them face to face, come for the mayor's breakfast, he can answer questions for you.
LIZ HARTMAN:: Okay. Anything else? Thank you, Heather Graves Ramsey for being a business person who ran the school bond campaign and we are so thrilled that it passed and it really is wonderful to see you in action and doing this for our schools because the schools are important to our business community.
MICHELLE ODELL:: So glad that it passed.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Thank you, Heather, for all you do. Thank you so much for helping with the podcast. It's, you know, this time of year we have to thank everybody [00:28:00] and you are definitely on that list. We really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening, and always remember that every day is a Chamber of Commerce Day here
LIZ HARTMAN:: in Lake Oswego.
LIZ HARTMAN:: The Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce. Thanks you for listening to Business Lo. We would love to have you as a member so you can help Lake Oswego continue to be one of the best places to live, work, and play. If you wanna share an idea for a future episode or become a member. Visit us@lakeoswegochamber.com and please like and follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
LIZ HARTMAN:: And for help with your business podcast, go to podcast productions.comO