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The Hernando Chamber of Commerce

The beginning of an era
On April 1, 1974, a group of industrious business leaders from the Hernando area realized the importance of forming a business association to protect and promote the city's commercial interests.

Like many communities across the country in the mid '70s, Hernando was feeling the pull of larger urban interests such as nearby Memphis. Industrial growth and higher paying jobs in the city were like a magnet, pulling much of the workforce of the town of nearly 2,000 across the state line. The proliferation of shopping malls and other commercial attractions in the city, along with the gradual fade of Hernando's staple dairy and crop farming industries, sparked a shift to recruit industry and protect the community's commercial assets.

In 1975, following a series of meetings that had begun the previous year, the Hernando Area Chamber of Commerce was incorporated.

Hernando realtor Joan Ferguson was the Chamber's first executive director following the association's formation.

"It was a beginning for seeing the need for business to thrive in Hernando," said Ferguson, who moved to Hernando from Brandon, Mississippi in 1974. "Our membership at the time consisted of small business owners and a lot of individual members. That was the nucleus of our chamber. Now it runs the gamut from small businesses to large industries and everything in between."

In the beginning, the Chamber's key mission was to attract shoppers to the town, which Ferguson said, "stopped at the (railroad) tracks" along Commerce Street.

To fund the fledgling organization's operation, Ferguson said the Chamber hosted numerous fundraisers and special events, including raffles and a popular Valentine's Day dance. The Chamber's most successful event, however, was the Hernando A'Fair, an arts and crafts fair that today is one of the best-attended annual events in the county.

For the next decade, the Chamber underwent several changes of staff and location, until in the early '90s when the Chamber finally landed under the auspices of the Hernando-based DeSoto County Economic Development Council. Because the Chamber shared space and a common employee with the Council, cost sharing enabled the Chamber to do more with less for the next several years.


In 1995, while the Chamber was still growing, the City of Hernando took a bold step by hiring its first planning director, Bob Barber. Barber, who realized the importance of preserving the town's historic resources, helped start a dialogue between the city and the Mississippi Downtown Development Association (MDDA), a state-supported agency that oversaw the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street program at the state level.

After several meetings with MDDA and the successful completion of an application, Hernando joined the ranks of nearly two dozen other Mississippi towns that shared similar goals in preserving and promoting their towns by becoming a certified Main Street community.

With Main Street now a function of the Chamber, a move was made to re-name the organization to recognize the inclusion of the town's new Main Street program. So, in 1998, the Hernando Area Chamber of Commerce changed its name to the Hernando Main Street/Chamber of Commerce.
Now, some ten years after joining Main Street, Hernando has seen a bountiful return from the program. In all, downtown Hernando has experienced more than $40 million in public and private reinvestment, seen an estimated 40 new businesses open their doors and felt the impact of more than 100 new jobs created.

During that same window of time, the organization has grown from less than 100 members to more than 350 members, representing all facets of business.

Governed by a 15-member board of directors, the Hernando Main Street/Chamber of Commerce consists of one full-time, and three part-time, employees.

Each year, the organization coordinates a variety of activities and events, including parades around the Fourth of July and at Christmas; an outdoor movies series; and the ever-popular Hernando Music & Heritage Festival, which has featured talent to the likes of The North Mississippi All-Stars, Ingram Hill and Aaron Tippin, among others.

In addition, Main Street coordinates numerous cooperative advertising campaigns with local retail merchants and sponsors the community's largest annual retail promotion - the Hernando Christmas Open House.

"Through the tandem efforts of Main Street and the Chamber of Commerce, this organization has the tremendous responsibility of not just promoting the business assets of the community, but also in preserving and enhancing the culture that has made Hernando one of the most desirable communities to live in the Mid-South," said Hernando Main Street/Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Brian Goff.

"That's a big part of what we do, and the response to that mission has been overwhelmingly positive by the majority of people that call Hernando home."

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