Whitefish Chamber director caps a busy first year

Kevin Gartland spent most of his life honing the skills he would need to lead a Chamber of Commerce in a ski town like Whitefish. He also spent nearly that long trying to get back to Montana.

Now, after a year on the job as executive director of the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce, Gartland said he’s finally in the right place at the right time.

“It’s been a great move, exactly what I had hoped for,” Gartland said on a recent snowy morning in Whitefish. “I can use my media background, my small business background and I’m a natural talker.”

The 54-year-old California native — he was born in Hollywood — took the leading role of promoting Whitefish businesses during a challenging chapter in the resort town’s history, as effects of the national recession continue to nip at the heels of both residents and businesses.

That’s why there wasn’t a moment to spare in getting some new events going.

“We were able to step it up quickly,” he said.

The chamber got involved when one of its members, Piggyback BBQ, began planning the first Stumptown BBQ Smoke Off in July. It was a natural crowd-pleaser, Gartland said. Close to 3,000 people attended the weekend event that was so popular that competing barbecue teams ran out of meat the first day.

“It was a first-year event, so we didn’t know exactly what to expect,” he said. “I think it has a lot of potential.”

Another new event that far exceeded expectations was the Great Northwest Oktoberfest, aimed at bringing visitors to town during the not-so-busy “shoulder” season.

And it did just that.

More than 4,000 people from the Flathead and across the region were drawn to the gigantic tent in Depot Park where beer, brats and oompah bands kept the crowd satisfied. The event filled roughly 250 hotel rooms.

“We were about at year-three attendance,” Gartland calculated, based on similar events he has helped stage in other parts of the country.

The Whitefish Chamber took over fundraising for the Fourth of July fireworks this year, bringing in $35,000 that paid for a full weekend of entertainment including concerts and pyrotechnics.

The Chamber also held a first-time indoor golf tournament and relaunched its luncheon series on a quarterly basis this year. Its e-newsletter was beefed up to keep chamber members more connected, and at the Dec. 10 Christmas Stroll, a few more “firsts” were rolled out: the World’s Shortest Christmas Parade, frozen turkey bowling and a K-9 Keg Pull.

If an event has the potential to benefit the resort town, everyone is on board, Gartland has observed.

“They’re supportive,” he said. “They’re open and welcoming people.”

GARTLAND has worked in enough places to know that Whitefish’s can-do attitude isn’t a universal attribute.

He got his first taste of Montana in the late 1970s when he took a break from studying economics and political science at the University of California-Los Angeles to be a ski bum for a winter.

He and a buddy sought out the slopes during that non-snowy winter in the West, hopping from Bend, Ore., to Mount Hood to Whitefish’s Big Mountain and Bozeman’s Big Sky resorts in Montana.

“It didn’t snow until mid-January,” he recalled. “We were in Keystone, Colorado, by that time.”

He eventually went back to UCLA, where he took a few journalism courses, aced them all, “and decided I knew everything.”

After marrying in 1981, he and Debbie moved to Helena where he worked for about six months as a TV sports reporter. Young and impulsive, he quit when he didn’t see eye-to-eye with his superiors.

“I knew I’d get another job, but I never got another job in Montana,” he said. At the time, the country was in the grips of a recession that left a soft job market in its wake.

He and his wife started a business promoting concerts in the Helena, Bozeman and Butte areas until he landed a reporting job with the Jackson Hole Guide.

“We wanted to live in the mountains,” he said.

Gartland then got on what he refers to as a journalism “merry-go-round,” hopping from the Jackson Hole paper to a weekly newspaper in the California wine country, then a four-day-a-week paper in Lake County, Calif., and finally taking a job as managing editor of the newspaper in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., a ski area.

All the while he and his wife kept promoting concerts and other events through their small business.

The merry-go-round hadn’t stopped yet, though. Gartland left the newspaper business to work in cable news and radio, and put together a publishing company that produced a visitors guide. His work in promotions often intersected with Chambers of Commerce.

Gartland then took a public relations job with the state of California, promoting recycling and waste-reduction programs. By that time he and his family — they have three children — had been on the West Coast for 15 years. His wife wanted to be closer to her family in Florida, so they moved cross-country in 1996.

IT WAS IN Florida where Gartland cut his teeth in the Chamber of Commerce arena.

“I was really on a track that I’d write for a living,” he said. But he quickly realized that chamber work allowed him to use all of his skills.

From 1996 to 2005 he served as president and chief executive officer of the Upper Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, which grew from 225 members to more than 800 members during his tenure. In 2006 and 2007 he was the Florida Chamber’s regional advocate for an 11-county area in West Central Florida.

Before coming to Whitefish he was vice president of governmental affairs and public relations for the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce, a 1,600-member organization located on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He was laid off when the recession hit two years ago, and by the time he accepted the Whitefish job, his wife had been laid off from her job at a printing company.

“The recession was much quicker and deeper down south,” Gartland said. “We still had two kids in college and we eventually lost our house.”

As Gartland “retools” his life in Montana, he’s also looking for new opportunities for the Whitefish Chamber. Even though the economic slump lingers in the Flathead Valley, he’s quick to point out that it’s still more robust than it is in places like Florida.

“I’ve always felt that Montana is a land of opportunity and I still believe that,” he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com