Q&A

Name: Robert Holt

Age: 46

Title: President, South Carroll Business Association

Occupation: President, Baltimore Credit and Collection Services

Favorite Band: Grateful Dead

Hero: President George W. Bush

For the past two years, Robert Holt has been the president of the South Carroll Business Association, which serves businesses which are located and have customers in the southern part of the county. He lives in Sykesville with his wife, Sandy, and two daughters, Keri and Megan.

Q: What do you see as your mission right now?

A: Well, we find that it's good that the business community here has a presence, the ability to work with folks in the area to provide business leadership of a sort, but also to work with those folks to make sure that the business community interacts with the community and works to the point that we develop things together so that we can both strive together and both have the ability to make our community grow.

Q: Given that South Carroll is the growth area of the county right now, what direction do you want things to go in terms of bringing new business to the area or improving existing business?

A: Well, we'd certainly like to see a strong business climate here. I know that there are concerns with the community as a whole that growth is managed, that growth is not sprawl. Certainly, I live in this community as well. I certainly don't want a huge mall to be moved in here, because we don't have the road system to support it. This is a bedrock community. This is not a Catonsville or something that is right off the main highway, so we can't support something like that. But by the same token, we want to see this business development in this area, what we have now certainly has to be supported, have more of the community shop in our local shops, having the business people in this area work with other business people in this area to promote our own businesses here in this area, that's certainly very important. That's something that we try to do at our meetings fairly regularly, our luncheons and other get togethers. And to try to understand each other's business, so that we have the ability to promote each other and the ability to refer a business to our own clients and to our clients' clients.

Q: Do you think that the county is doing a good job of promoting business around here?

A: Yes, I think so. I know that there are a number of ways that that's happening, certainly the office of Economic Development is doing a good job. The Chamber of Commerce is very active and works well with the members in the business community. We are members of the chamber as well, and work with the chamber on a number of things to address those issues.

Q: What's your opinion on the development deferral?

A: I understand, here again, that there's got to be some tempered growth, and to that end, as I mentioned, we want to work with the community to understand their needs and make sure that they're addressed. We have a meeting tonight of the [Freedom Area Citizens Council]. It's the local citizen's action committee group, and we're members of each other's groups. I've spoken at their meetings. We put their sign up ... with the Lions and the Optimists. We put them up there, we want to be able to work with them. Growth - specifically, we need to continue to encourage growth, we're not going to shy away from growth, because we're the business organization for the South Carroll area. But we understand the concerns of the community. We want to make sure that that's looked at and appreciated.

Q: Do you think that Carroll County is going to hold on to its own character, or do you think it's just going to become part of greater Baltimore?

A: That's a super question, and if I had a crystal ball, I would say it'd probably be a combination of both. I think that, quite frankly, the fact that the reservoir is there is a huge buffer. But I don't know if that really means anything or not. Maybe I'm wrong. That's just a sense of how it might be. But I would hope that we could retain the flavor of this area. You move to an area, and more move there because they love it so much and they hear how nice it is, and it's inevitable that there's going to be changes, but you hope that it's going to stay the way it is when you move in. In fact, you almost kind of say "guys, this is great, nobody else come." But that's not going to happen, that's not the reality of it. I hope we can retain some of the charm, sure.

Q: What would you say the are the most important things that need to be taken care of in the next few years, from the business association's perspective?

A: Well, the business association as a whole ... we've been around since the mid-90's. Two years ago ... we were down to just a few members. Ten or 12 would come to the meetings, we almost disbanded. But there were a group of us who decided, "Hey, we don't want this to stop," we want to keep it going. So we formed a new board, we got things going, we got much more involvement from the new group. And to that end, we've been able to get our numbers up over 100, and we get 30 to 40 to come to the luncheons. That was our initial goal, to get our numbers up. Now that we've done that, now we want to look at other issues. We couldn't do anything with 10 or 12 people. With 100, we can make more of an impact. We can have more committees that will look - we have a government affairs committee that talks to the government and gets the feedback from the local government on the issues that represent the business community and the community as a whole. We are looking more at - one of our tenets is beautification, which we haven't looked at for a while, but we need to address that as well and make sure that the area - the association planted trees years ago. And if there are other projects we need to look at from that standpoint, perhaps that's something we can do as well. We want to become more involved with fund-raising for the area. We've sponsored a couple of library projects. Those kinds of things that don't take a lot of effort per se but can be meaningful because it shows the business community is making an effort to address the needs of the area.

Q: Looking at the other side of the coin, what are the things going right that you'd like to keep going?

A: Well, I want to keep doing that. The way we had to get our numbers up was to provide a reason for them to come. And this being the business community, the main reason was because everyone wanted to get more business. And so, if we can continue to get more people involved from the association's standpoint, we can do more things. We can continue to get our numbers up. It's certainly the thing that we'd like to do because, here again, we can promote each other's business and get the whole business community involved, and then we can work on other projects that I mentioned before, interaction with the various groups. We're going to have, in the near future - we've discussed this on a smaller level, but I need to talk to them - [Carroll Community College] working with some of the schools in the area, I know that the chamber has a job share that we do, maybe we can work with something like that.

Q: What sort of challenges are there orchestrating a business group that covers such a broad area as the southern part of the county, getting that group to work as a whole?

A: I tell you, what I'd really like to do is get Mount Airy more involved because they're still the South Carroll area. They are also not looked at from a Westminster perspective. The folks up in Westminster have not looked at the South Carroll area as much, and by the same token, we haven't looked at the Mount Airy area as much. We do have members from Mount Airy, and I do think we need to become more involved over there. We are sprawled a bit, but Westminster is as well - the Westminster area. But, I think that main thing is we need to get Mount Airy more involved, because they are part of our area.

Q: What sort of things are you looking at doing to try and draw Mount Airy closer in?

A: I think what we need to do is have an affair out there, an after-hours, perhaps. And, we need to talk to the folks out there, maybe I'll chat with Mike Zimmer, he's out there, he's going to be joining our board.

Q: How have you enjoyed your two years as the president of the association?

A: This is the first business association that I've been the president of. It's good. It's been a learning experience. It's been good for me personally because I've been able to meet a lot of folks in the area. So, from that perspective, I've really enjoyed it. It's good to have a good, strong board of directors, because I couldn't have done anything if I'd been the only one at the meetings, so that certainly helped. But, I enjoyed doing it, and I'll do it again. In any case, I'll serve on the board.

Q: Is there anything you'd do different if you knew when you started what you know now?

A: Advertised more, I think. And that's something that I think we really need to do. We've got to make sure that every meeting is in the Carroll County Times, every meeting is in the Gazette, the Eagle. Every announcement of anything that happens with the association needs to be promoted. We have a newsletter, we send out e-mails, we make announcements at other meetings, and we have phone calls and that kind of thing, but we need to utilize the services of you guys more.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

A: We like this area - I moved my family here three years ago - we just love this area. Very, very familial, lots of kids in our neighborhood, some nice folks in this area. We expect to stay here ... until we retire, certainly. I'm aware and I'm cognizant of the concerns of the local community with regards to urban sprawl or suburban sprawl, if you will, and I hope we can continue to work with the community and address their needs, and I hope they'll become more involved with the business association as well.

Reach staff writer Justin Palk at 410-751-5909 or jpalk@lcniofmd.com.

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