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Billerica Chamber of Commerce

The Billerica Chamber of Commerce is the name of two bodies of the town's businesses: a chamber of the early 1930s and a later chamber that in the 1980s was an affiliate of the regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Northern Middlesex, the body now called the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce, and that took part in the town's zoning and sign debates into the 2000s.

Miller's Billerica directory of 1930-1931 lists the Billerica Chamber of Commerce as meeting on the first Tuesday of each month by appointment, with Bernard W. Kearney as chairman and Howard B. Lent as secretary and treasurer. Kearney had served in 1913 on a committee of the older Billerica Board of Trade, whose history is told with that of the Billerica Business Men's Club; the Board of Trade was still mentioned in the town report for 1928. Through the 1940s and 1950s the town's businessmen worked through the Business Men's Club, and in 1960 the high school reported a letter of thanks from the regional Chamber of Commerce of Greater Lowell, whose Retail Division sponsored the Christmas season "Welcome to Santa" parade, for the part the Billerica High School Band played in it.

By 1982 a Billerica Chamber of Commerce was again at work: Shawsheen Valley Technical High School reported that year that it had hosted the chamber, "with whom we are working closely." The Billerica section of the 1985 Polk Lowell city directory was printed "Courtesy of Billerica Chamber of Commerce, an Affiliate of The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Northern Middlesex," under that regional chamber's president and chief executive officer, Kevin E. Coughlin. At the fall town meeting of 1995 the members of both the Billerica Plan and the Billerica Chamber of Commerce were reported in favor of an amendment to the sign rules of the zoning by-law, and the sign study committees proposed in 1997 and 1998 each included a member nominated by the chamber. A chamber appointee, Stephen Dresser, sat on the Zoning By-Law Review Committee from 2000 to 2003, and a chamber member, Neelam Wali, on the Adequate Access By-law Review Committee from 2002 to 2005; a 2002 article on another by-law committee also gave a seat to a member of the chamber.

From 1999 to at least 2008 the chamber gave graduating seniors of Billerica Memorial High School the Billerica Chamber of Commerce Gilbert A. Griggs Scholarship. In 2005 and 2006 students of the computer science and internet technology programs at Shawsheen Valley Technical High School built and then updated a web site for the chamber. The chamber held a breakfast with the Board of Selectmen in 2005, the selectmen and town manager held one of their neighborhood meetings in 2006 for the chamber and the business community, and the Council on Aging listed the chamber among the groups it worked with in 2006 and 2008.

The Billerica chamber does not appear in the town reports after 2008. Since then the town's link with organized business has been the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce: Town Hall hosted a Town Business Day for that chamber in 2010, in 2022 the town's Planning and Community Development staff took an active part in it, and in 2023 they represented Billerica on its board.

Billerica Chamber of Commerce

Billerica Chamber of Commerce

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