Raj Kudchadkar has led the Central Maryland Chamber of Commerce since its inception two years ago. The result of merging two chambers of commerce—the Baltimore Washington Corridor Chamber and the West County Chamber—the newly minted Central Chamber sought to pool the resources and business interests in what has become one of the Maryland’s most booming economic regions—the corridor from Baltimore south toward Washington, D.C., and from the eastern point of Odenton westward to Columbia. With Kudchadkar, the new chamber landed a qualified leader, who previously led Howard County’s Department of Planning and Zoning, and it’s Office of Military Affairs. Prior to those positions, he also served as the executive director of Base Business Initiative, a growth management committee that worked hand-in-hand with Fort Meade’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).
For Kudchadkar, the timing was right. He signed on to become West County Chamber’s President, following the retirement of its longtime successful leader, Claire Louder. Yet, one month into assuming the position, he found himself in talks with two chamber boards to complete their merger. Almost overnight, Kudchadkar’s chamber membership blossomed to more than 500 businesses and his board of directors doubled from 13 to 27. Amazingly, between the two chambers, there were only about 20 businesses with overlapping membership.
Kudchadkar, age 41, originally hails from the Bronx in New York City, is married with two children, and lives in Columbia. He sat down with us to discuss chamber interests, the growth he’s seeing in both membership and economic development throughout three counties, and legislation he’s advocating for this General Assembly.
Can you talk a little about the genesis of the two chambers merging?
I think a little bit of it is serendipity, quite honestly. We had two long-term execs. I mean, these were two CEOs that had been there for years. Claire [Louder] was almost 10 years with West Anne Arundel County Chamber, and then on the other side was the Baltimore Washington Corridor Chamber, where Walt [Townshend] was there for 28 years. He was the institution in a lot of respects. They ended up looking for CEOs at the same exact time, and they actually started their own independent CEO searches.
I was aware of the BWCC and their search, but I had not applied for any leadership position with them. I was aware of West County and the fact that they were looking for a CEO, but in my case, I was only about two years into being the Deputy Director of Planning & Zoning in Howard County. Allan Kittleman put a lot of faith in me as a county executive there. He promoted me to this new job. We’re just coming off the flooding in Ellicott City.
I actually had not thrown my hat in the ring. I think the serendipity part is that the board members from both chambers happened to be talking to each other and said, “Hey, you know what? We have one chamber that’s just east of the installation, and then we have another chamber that’s just southwest of the installation.”
So, the two chambers that are closest to Ft. Meade, work very closely with Ft. Meade. I think they said, “Hey, maybe we should look and see what a merger would mean for our businesses.” Now, I think we’re lucky that in terms of logistics it worked out because if there was too much overlap with membership, then the numbers wouldn’t work. People always ask me, “What does that mean?”
The best way to explain it is if you had 100 members in each chamber, but 50 of them were overlap, then when we merge those 50 businesses weren’t going to pay dues two times. They were just going to pay it once. So, a massive amount of our revenue stream would go away. Even though we were merging 500-plus businesses, there were less than 20 that overlapped.
Well how does that work in terms of you have two boards coming together? I imagine maybe different sets of bylaws of some sort.
Great question. Mergers are never easy. Before the merger, we actually had done some research with the other chambers and associations, and what they went through. It takes time. There are a lot of things that we have to balance. One thing was the boards. The BWCC had a board of 30. They had a huge board. West County had 13. So, in order to make it a merger of equals, we had to get rid of a lot of people on the BWCC side so we’d have 13 and 13, so it would be an equal balance. We actually have 27 members, because we have one council, Steven Stern, on there. But 27 altogether.
You came on in December 2016. The merger was official in May 2017. Has the first year-plus been making this all come together?
I tell people the best job I’ve ever had in my life is being a Chamber CEO, and the worst I’ve ever had in my life is merging two chambers. I would say middle of last year I was definitely spending the majority of my time dealing with merger logistics, and now that’s not the case. I’m spending more time working on chamber events directly supporting our small businesses, and working with our community.
What’s a typical daylike for you now?
A typical day, lots of meetings, lots of events. The day is really dictated by what we have going on event-wise, and what our businesses are looking for. I mean, I’d say it’s a pretty even split. One third of my time is direct support, so I answer a lot of emails, phone calls. I tell you that’s a third of my time.
Another third of the time is just dealing with chamber logistics operations. The last third is dealing with the events and dealing with our committees. In a given year, we have over 100 events and community meetings going on, so we have a lot going on there. Those are my three major buckets.
What’s the climatetoday between the many regional chambers?
It’s interesting you ask. This is going to be a long answer. A couple of things. The first thing is it’s a very saturated environment. We have lots of chambers in the State of Maryland. In Anne Arundel County, we have seven chambers. We actually have a Council of Chambers and work very closely together.
The interesting thing is when I first got hired in December 2016, I was a rookie. It was interesting because the beginning of each year, the Anne Arundel County Executive has a roundtable with all the chamber CEOs. Obviously, I was the new guy. Then, when he did it the beginning of this year, every single person was new except for in South County. Every single other CEO was new.
It’s all turnover. One year, I went from being a rookie to a veteran. But even with those former CEOs last year, I had a great relationship with them. Look, as a regional chamber, I have to be a team player because I overlap. I cover three jurisdictions. There’s lots of chambers. My philosophy is a high tide lifts all ships.
Working with so many chambers and members, what are the big issues that you’re looking at right now for small business?
Obviously paid sick leave last session was a huge thing, and the impact on small business. For me, it’s interesting because my dad is the consummate immigrant story. He came in the late-’70s just with a little bit of cash he had in his pocket, and he started a small business and grew it. I saw what that meant for him, our family, and community. That’s why everything I’ve done is in support of small businesses.
With paid sick leave, the one thing I was saying last year is that, “All businesses know that their workers are their most important asset,” which is why the vast majority of businesses are doing paid sick leave. The ones that aren’t, they’re not doing it typically because their model will implode. It’s hard for them to do it. Financially, it’s very difficult. But now that paid sick leave has passed, there’s still stuff that we need to do.
I tell people the best job I’ve ever had in my life is being a Chamber CEO, and the worst I’ve ever had in my life is merging two chambers. I would say middle of last year I was definitely spending the majority of my time dealing with merger logistics, and now that’s not the case
One thing we want to do is we want to survey our membership, see how it’s impacting them because you can always tweak the laws, you can always amend laws, improve them. There’s some balancing that needs to happen. It was very rushed last year.
The other thing is there’re different aspects of the law that people aren’t aware of. For example, the Maryland Department of Commerce can give you a tax credit as a small business, and a lot of our businesses aren’t aware of that. It’s us informing them. So, I think paid sick leave is still an important issue.
We’re going to be keeping an eye on minimum wage. Session will be starting soon in Annapolis. It’s been an issue the last several sessions. In terms of larger regional issues, one thing that we’re definitely paying close attention to is the expansion of highway 295.
We’re going to be sending letters to our federal delegation, imploring them, “Make sure that the feds give the state a say in expanding 295.” And 295 is very fractured. The top portion is controlled by Baltimore City, the middle portion is controlled by the state, and the bottom portion is controlled by the feds. It’s a major artery for our businesses, so it’s definitely going to be our key topic for us.
Do you find yourself going into the Senate or House Chambers to advocate for certain type of legislation?
We have an Advocacy Day where members from our committee will go down to Annapolis and we have white papers that we give them and say, “Here are the 15 bills we think are going to have the most impact on our businesses. This is how we want to change that bill. Or, this is a bill we want to promote. Or, this is a bill we think that really should impact.” We’re down in Annapolis, we’re knocking on doors, shooting emails off.
What are some of the big projects that you’re looking at right now that you’re happy, that you’re seeing some action on in and around the greater chamber area?
Rec and Parks is doing a feasibility study. Open space is very important to the chamber. It’s critical to quality of life, so we’ve been pushing that. We’ve also been looking at the Transit Oriented Development, TOD. At the Market Station here at Odenton, we’re looking at retail, residential, and a parking garage to go in there.
Another thing is looking at grid streets, which is already in the budget for the county; putting in grid streets in Odenton. The Navy is poised now to sell the dairy farm—50-plus acres to Anne Arundel County. Anne Arundel County is going to consider their options there.
There’s also Enhanced Use Lease (EUL). It’s where Ft. Meade gives a chunk of their land to a developer, and they lease it to the developer for 50 years. They build office space, and then tech companies come in and fill up that office space. There will be one right across from the gates of Ft. Meade, which will be a huge project.
We’re certainly monitoring that Route 175 project. When that’s completed, it’s going to be a huge thing for us—this major artery in Odenton.
Is there a large enough base here to build membership? Do you feel like there is enough small business to continue to grow?
Definitely. We’re so uniquely situated as a regional chamber. Most chambers are local, so if you look at a chamber, their name says it all, right?
And it’ll usually be a city. Sometimes it’ll be “greater so and so,” but typically the city. If you are the Chamber of City of X, you’re typically not working with businesses in City A or City B.
With us being regional, we have that cross ventilation that no other chamber has. We’re always working across jurisdictional lines, connecting businesses in all different areas. Yes, we have a lot of room for growth.
