For a chamber of commerce guy, getting the chance to come to work in a boomtown like Ocala/Marion County is a great opportunity. After all, our community is America’s fastest growing metropolitan area and keeping up with the growth and prosperity is both a blessing and a challenge.

Matt McCormick, who was hired as the president and CEO of the Ocala Metro Chamber and Economic Partnership in September, recognizes that for all of Ocala’s economic success of the past decade, what the future looks like is not as easy as just keeping on keeping on. It will require collaboration, thoughtful planning and figuring out what Ocala’s growth will look like into the 2030s and beyond.

“Growth is good,” McCormick told the Mosaic. “It always brings its opportunities. … I’ve heard both sides of the growth debate, the good and bad, the challenges and the opportunities. Ocala and Marion County is a wonderful place for a reason.”

McCormick was hired by the CEP following a nationwide search after Kevin Sheilley, McCormick’s predecessor for the past 13 years at the CEP, took a similar post in Charleston, South Carolina. McCormick comes to Ocala with 27 years of chamber experience, the last 12 as president and CEO of the chamber of commerce in Columbia, Missouri.

McCormick takes the helm of one of the nation’s most respected business and economic development organizations. In 2020, the CEP was named the top chamber in the United States by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives from among 1,600 chambers nationwide. Last year it was a finalist for the same award.

McCormick acknowledges that expectations are high for the organization and, therefore, its leadership. But he also believes the CEP is a quality organization and his job will be to keep “the momentum going.”

The Texas native said that is a reasonable expectation, given all that Ocala/Marion County has going for it, rattling off a long list of the community’s attributes.

Location, location, location. Ocala’s sits in the heart of Florida’s golden triangle of Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.

Ocala’s unique system of highways, especially Interstate 75, makes moving goods easy, while also bringing in new residents.

Also, the availability of a labor force that just keeps growing is a huge lure to companies, he said, adding, “A lot of places have more jobs than people. We have people moving in.” Part of his initial focus will be finding ways to address labor shortages in business growth sectors like health care, construction and agriculture.

McCormick more than once mentioned “the potential” of the Ocala International Airport and the increasing need to establish some kind of air service, at least regionally.

And, of course, infrastructure development, from roads to schools, is essential to accommodate the ongoing growth of Ocala.

McCormick said while his job is to help facilitate continued economic growth and business development, he also is aware of concerns by many in the community that Ocala is growing too big, too fast. He said managing growth in a way that protects Ocala’s economic and natural assets is vital and a key component of any CEP plan moving forward.

“The growth is going to come,” he said, adding that he spent the early part of his career in the Dallas, Texas, area when its population was exploding. “How do we protect the assets of the community? You’ve got the horse farms, the forest, the springs and more.”

At the same time, McCormick does not believe the explosive growth happening in Ocala is an anomaly or short term

“This is not a flash in the pan,” he said. “It’s something that you can sustain.”

CEP board member Ken Ausley, who served on the selection committee that hired McCormick and is a former CEP board chairman, said how the CEP and McCormick handle the growth issue will be a critical part of the organization’s strategic plan moving forward.

“We are the product of our own success,” said Ausley, CEO of Ocala-based Ausley Construction. “The old way of super-charged growth isn’t going to play the way it did 12 years ago (when Sheilley joined the CEP.

“One of the biggest conversations we had with Matt was unequivocally the explosive growth and how do we manage the growth and appease the people who oppose it.”

Ausley went to say the only way to do that is to create an “alignment of government and the business community” that fosters responsible economic and population growth while preserving the quality of life so many who here enjoy.

“I think one of Matt’s biggest goals is going to be to create that alignment and what’s that alignment going to look like,” he said.

Another selection committee member and former CEP chairperson, Angie Lewis, said one of the things that set him apart from the 10 or so candidate that competed for the CEP job was McCormick’s long history of building collaborative relationships with local government, i.e. city, county and school boards.

“He talked a lot about how they would work together,” Lewis said.

His previous employers and communities, she said, touted his strength as “a team builder and player.”

She also said McCormick has an impressive resume of workforce and business community development and will play a pivotal role in developing the CEP’s next five-year plan, which she, too, said will take into consideration the importance of smart growth.

“It just can’t be a CEP plan,” Lewis said.

McCormick, 49, graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas with a major in speech communications. He said it has served him well. Lewis concurred, saying the selection committee was impressed with his communications skills.

“I think he’ll be good at messaging,” she said.”

Both Lewis and Ausley said any CEP plan moving forward will include “robust discussions” about whether to continue focusing on current hot industries like logistics or to look at light manufacturing or other sorts of industries to further diversify Ocala’s economic base.

Among the issues the two CEP leaders see as important in the near term are “air mobility,” meaning some sort of air service from Ocala; renewed emphasis on containing most new development within the Urban Service Boundary surrounding Ocala; creating more collaboration between the business community and local government; and encouraging local government to enhance infrastructure, especially road capacity, now that they have a 20-year one-cent local sales tax that will raise more than $1 billion largely for that purpose.

Ausley thinks McCormick, who he called “a chamber guy through and through,” is ideal to help lead those conversations.

“The thing that impressed us most about Matt is he’s a very strong leader, with an ability to build really strong teams,” he said.

And building teams is one of McCormick’s first undertaking – that is, building his own team. The CEP has a number of open positions, including the crucial economic development specialist post. He is also trying to learn the CEP’s structure and programming to determine what changes or improvements he can offer, as well as looking at what programs or initiatives are needed in the community that the CEP can help foster.

In Columbia, McCormick led two particularly impressive efforts to better the community. One was that chamber’s Leadership Visit program, where each year 70 people were chosen to visit another city and review their best practices that could be adopted back home.

The second thing McCormick helped bring to fruition was the building of a $2.8 billion widening of Interstate 70 from St. Louis to Kansas City that passes right through Columbia, including a new, sorely needed bridge over the Missouri River in Columbia.

As for McCormick’s personal life, he has been married to his wife, Tammi, for 28 years. She’s a speech pathologist. He notes that for 27 of those 28 years he has been in the chamber business, so “she is just as much a part of how this stuff works as I am.”

The McCormicks have two children: a 15-year-old daughter who attends Forest High and loves theater and running track; and a 20-year-old son who attends Valparaiso University in Indiana where he is on the swim team.

In his free time, McCormick like to bike, both mountain and road cycling, and has a boat, which he enjoys as much as he can.

As he continues to get to know the community and takes steps to make his mark on the CEP, McCormick said his focus is on the future.

“My main focus is not on making my mark,” he said, “but what is it that we need to be doing to be moving forward. My plan is not to be sitting still but to be looking forward.”