By By Robbie Byrd, News Editor
The Atmore Area Chamber of Commerce is working to Clean Up Atmore.
Last week Mayor Shell announced that Governor Don Siegelman will be visiting Atmore in July as part of his "Communities of Excellence" tour.
To prepare for his visit the Chamber, along with city government officials and citizens throughout the community are working to prepare the city for his visit.
"We've sent information to every chamber member plus business owners that are not members, but that care about the community," said Emilie Mims, executive director of the Chamber. "We had our initial meeting (to discuss the cleanup effort) with the downtown businesses, but this is something we hope and expect will filter out to the other businesses."
According to the Chamber, the Governor and his team of economic experts will visit Atmore with a check list of areas that visiting industries look at when searching for potential locations. These areas include work force, infrastructure, airport facilities, education and community appearance, among other things.
The Chamber and City of Atmore have joined forces and committed to a major clean-up and improvement effort.
The Chamber is asking local businesses to take a critical look at the exterior appearance of your business. According to the a flyer released by the Chamber, these ideas could help improve the appearance of area businesses:
A flyer prepared by the Chamber states: "Although the governor's visit is a springboard for this concentrated effort, keeping our community clean and attractive all the time needs to be our standard. We should except no less, but it is up to each of us to do his or her part. Appearance does make a difference."
Mims said the Chamber has many members who are wiling to help with various cleanup efforts. Mims suggests those interested call the Chamber at 368-3305.
What can residents do?
Some area business members are even going a step further, taking on projects not necessarily connected with their business.
"The chamber would like to take our hats off to the folks at Davids Catfish House - Rob Faircloth, Terrence Breckenridge and Elliot Faircloth who have adopted Atmore Heritage Park on Main Street," Mims said. "The evidence of their work is a very talked about thing in the community."
Rob and Elliot Faircloth and Breckenridge have been working to beauty the park, located on South Main Street, for several weeks.
Mims said there are lots of other areas that could use the same attention.
"There are corners and other public areas that need attention, such as manicuring," Mims said. "A little work makes a huge impression."
Mayor Howard Shell also has some suggestions on cleaning up property that residents already own.
"Property that absentee owners still have in town, such as buildings and residential homes that are no longer lived in need to be cleaned up and removed, if necessary," Shell said. "Generally, we just need to make everything a lot neater and more pleasing to the eye as we have out of town of visitors coming through."
The mayor suggests that residents do the following:
Since the Governor will be coming at an unknown time in July, the Mayor suggests that residents get to work as soon as possible.
"We've got to work like (the Governor will be in Atmore) next week," Shell said.
CLEANUP