by Amy Smith
Call
it radical thinking,
but 1996 might be the year the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce rumbles out
of its trenches to rally for the masses. Granted, that’s a hard one to swallow
in a town where the Chamber is identified with developers, and developers are
identified (in much of the public rhetoric, at least) with everything that’s
wrong with the world. But Kerry Tate, the incoming chair who will guide the
board of directors in setting policy, has laid out a relatively progressive
agenda that is the closest the Chamber has ever come to the New Deal.
Tate, who succeeds 3M executive Bill McLellan on January 1, actually has a
bigger job on her hands than prodding the age-old business organization to
provide more than just lip service to important community issues. She has to
convince a doubting public that the Chamber isn’t such a self-centered lot
after all. But then, Tate makes her living putting a favorable spin on things.
She owns TateAustin, a small advertising and public relations agency downtown.
Her firm, readers may recall, handled the city-funded TV spots designed to
“educate” voters on the 1993 bond election to relocate and build a new airport,
before the city abruptly scrubbed the campaign amid complaints that the ads
tilted more toward promotion than information. Tate acknowledges the campaign
was “aggressive.”
Okay, so maybe she gets carried away with the boosterism thing. “Do I sound
too rah-rah?” she asked after breakfast one morning. Well, yes; she had just
spent the past hour touting the Chamber, and how much more inclusive it’s
become in the past few years. But Tate has other dimensions, too. She feels
very strongly about the Chamber standing up and addressing some serious
problems in the community. At the top of the list are public education, the
environment, and affordable housing — not your usual front-burner Chamber
schtick. “Those are clear and present dangers that have to be addressed now,”
she says. “Those are things you just can’t escape.” On public education, she’ll
champion a huge bond proposal, tentatively set for referendum next spring, that
will fund construction of new schools and upgrade some existing ones. On the
environment, she wants to convey to the business community that water quality
is necessary for Austin’s economic health, not just to keep salamanders from
going belly up. And on the issue of housing, Tate wants the Chamber to use its
influence to promote inner-city housing for the largely ignored working stiffs
in the $18,000-$35,000 income bracket.
“Kerry has an uncanny ability to bring together people who traditionally have
been left out of the usual cliques,” says Cloteal Davis Haynes, a consultant to
non-profit groups. In Haynes’ case, Tate persuaded her to join the Chamber and
draw on her housing background to head a committee on affordable housing. “I’m
not aware of anything the Chamber has done in the past to promote affordable
housing — that’s just not their charter,” said Haynes, who is vice chair of
the city Housing Authority and served in the Carter Administration’s Department
of Housing and Urban Development. “But in comes Kerry who says we can use the
chamber’s visibility and resources to resolve some tough problems in the
community.”
Similarly, Kirk Watson, a trial lawyer and Travis County Democratic chairman,
joined the Chamber this year at Tate’s urging. He’ll begin the new year as the
group’s vice chair of governmental relations. That’s an interesting twist,
considering Watson supported and gave money to the Save Our Springs (SOS)
campaign — a 1992 water quality initiative that the Chamber’s executive board
vigorously opposed. “I must admit,” said Watson, “that I have many of the same
knee-jerk reactions that most people have when you mention the Chamber of
Commerce. But Kerry’s efforts to include people with different points of view
is real appealing to me.”
Tate, at 40, doesn’t have much history as a Chamber player. Basically, she
paid her dues in her career and hardly gave the group much thought until three
years ago when Ron Kessler, then the incoming chair, started trying to add some
youth and diversity to the Chamber membership. In short, Kessler was trying to
clean up the mess made during the SOS brawl that painted a fragmented business
community this way: the Chamber-backed development and real estate interests in
one corner and everyone else in the other. But fragmentation is not such a bad
thing, Tate reasons. “It means Austin isn’t like Dallas or Houston where you
have old money and old families that have been in charge for a long time,” she
said. “Austin doesn’t have that kind of leadership and not everyone in the
Chamber thinks alike. When the membership is polled on issues, most of the time
it comes back 50-50 or 45-55. The Chamber is not a single point of view.”
Even before SOS, though, small businesses had begun yanking their membership
based on what was perceived as the Chamber’s single point of view. Texicalli
Grill owner Danny Young jumped ship in the mid-Eighties. “At first, the Chamber
was more of a community organization, but then Lee Cooke came along…” Young
said of the former mayor’s reign as president of the organization from
1983-1987. “I like Lee Cooke personally, but under him, they became strictly
big-business oriented. Then they got on this growth-at-any-cost kick and it was
downhill from there.” Patricia Hayes, the president of St. Edward’s University
who herself chaired the Chamber in 1988, understands the widespread
disillusionment that grew out of that decade. “It arose legitimately during the
growth period of the Eighties,” she said. “The Chamber played a very different
role then. The Chamber we have today is much more community-oriented.”
Tate is credited with helping the group create a more community-oriented image
for itself. “At first, I figured the Chamber was just like any other chamber. I
mean, I’m a business person, so of course I thought they did a good job as an
advocate for business, but I never really paid much attention to it.” She
recalled one meeting with some Chamber leaders just over two years ago that
convinced her to become an active participant. “I walked out of there and said,
`I’ll be damned, they feel the same way I do about Austin.’ It was then that I
really caught the bug.”
It could be said that Tate is a high achiever and an earnest networker. Her
life at TateAustin began 10 years ago as an employee. That was when Cathy
Bonner owned the company under her own name and employed less than a handful of
people. Bonner took a leave of absence to help get Ann Richards the governor’s
job and left Tate in charge. When Richards appointed Bonner to head the Texas
Department of Commerce, Tate took advantage of a fortuitous moment. She bought
Bonner out of the company in 1990 and hung a new shingle under the name Bonner
& Tate, keeping Bonner’s high-profile identification to help build
business. In five years, Tate established a smart list of clients, tripled
billings, and the company grew from three employees to 20 — 15 women and five
men. With clients and credibility under her belt, she changed the company name
to TateAustin and moved down the street to set up shop in the historic Koppel
building at Fourth and Congress.
Tate provides counsel to Brackenridge Hospital, Capital Metro, and the City of
Austin where transportation matters are concerned. Other clients include St.
Edward’s University, the San Antonio Spurs, Randall’s Food Markets, and the Del
Webb Corp., the Phoenix-based development firm that’s building a mega community
for “active seniors” in Georgetown. Tate admits to being nervous about tending
to non-paying Chamber affairs while trying to keep her own business going.
Unlike her predecessors, she doesn’t hail from a large corporation where
there’s plenty of back-up to go around. But Tate isn’t much like her
predecessors — and she’s probably the only Chamber chair to live south of the
river and east of I-35. Austin City Councilmember Brigid Shea sees a refreshing
change ahead for the Chamber. “She has the kind of leadership qualities that we
need in this community, someone who can move the Chamber in a direction that
it’s needed to go for a long time.” George Cofer, programs manager for the Save
Barton Creek Association, is struck by her vision of Austin as a sustainable
city. “Kerry is actually touched by that vision. She knows she is working
within a very narrow window of time and she’s very focused and smart about what
she can accomplish.”
Tate and her board of directors absconded to Boerne in late September to hash
out some “strategic initiatives” for the new year. In addition to Tate’s three
“clear and present danger issues,” the list is fairly meaty. It includes the
usual things — downtown redevelopment and regional planning — but the goals
also focus on mobility issues, the development of workforce training
opportunities, and formal recognition of neighborhood organizations. The new
Chamber also believes that, while the high-tech industry serves a significant
economic function, it’s time to diversify. Tate estimates that maybe 20% of
Chamber efforts will go toward recruiting outside industry, while the remaining
80% will be concentrated here at home. “Our job growth will come from existing
companies. The large companies here are so vital to Austin, but this is a small
business town. Companies the size of mine are doing some really interesting
things. Those are the ones that are going to prosper, along with the big
companies.”
All this happy talk can make some people edgy. It makes Tate feel exhilarated.
“This is the first time in a long time that so many people are singing off the
same page of the hymn book,” she says. “Maybe what that means is that the next
time we disagree on something, we’ll be better at it.” It’s true that Tate has
a charm that makes you want to believe, and she’s made believers out of key
people who otherwise never put much stock in the Chamber. But can she succeed
in getting the Chamber to do good by this town and spiff up the group’s image
in the process? Time will tell, but this much we do know: She’s facing the
toughest public relations battle of her career.
This article appears in December 22 • 1995 and December 22 • 1995 (Cover).