The Future Of Business In Oceanside: Chamber CEO Scott Ashton

OCEANSIDE, CA — In his role as CEO of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce, Scott Ashton is part business advocate, part community champion and part visionary with an all-encompassing dedication to helping Oceanside prosper.

Throughout the pandemic, Ashton's leadership provided resources for Oceanside business owners to navigate the path to economic recovery. His vision for the future will undoubtedly influence Oceanside's evolving landscape.

Originally from Massachusetts, Scott has spent the last 25 years in Oceanside helping businesses succeed. After gaining three decades of experience in the Chamber of Commerce industry, Scott Ashton became Chief Executive Officer of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce in November 2016. In 2021, Scott joined the board of The Western Association of Chamber Executives (W.A.C.E.), further establishing his reputation as a leader in business.

The Patch reached out to Scott and asked for his take on the current business climate and balancing the needs of business, residents, government, and the many visitors that are integral to the Oceanside economy.

How is business in Oceanside these days?

We're certainly turning a corner in a positive direction. One thing that I've learned about our business community is they are a very resilient group and they look out for each other. Especially in the restaurant industry. In March of last year, I invited myself and council member Ryan Keim to a group of restaurant owners get together. We ended up in a text group with all these owners looking out for each other and sharing information. That was a great testimony of how our business community was coming together through this.

Now that we've turned a corner, there are new challenges, especially in the restaurant hospitality industry. They're having difficulties in hiring. There's great optimism they're going to find a way to make it work even with reduced levels of staffing to maximize this tourism season and to
hopefully recoup some of the losses from the past year. The Chamber was able to play a small role and partnered with the city with a small business grant program. We administered grants for about 240 small businesses, totaling about $460,000.

In order for a full recovery, we need to get people back to work because businesses can only do so much when they're not properly staffed. it's the biggest short-term challenge right now.

Long term we're actually going through a process and doing some roundtable sessions with our members asking for input on the biggest issues facing the Oceanside economy over the next few years. This is for our five-year strategic plan and while the workforce has come up, the biggest issue is the homelessness crisis and its impact on the business community. We're getting a lot of feedback that employees don't feel safe and that visitors are expressing concerns. This issue is not new and it's not unique to Oceanside. It's something that cities all over the country are facing, but it's a real challenge.

What do most businesses want done about the problem?

Most businesses just want the city to find solutions. We actually had tremendous support from the business community when we did outreach asking businesses to send letters to the council before they voted on it and we had something like 240 letters sent.

To the credit of the City of Oceanside, they are finding creative ways to deal with the issue as they did with the anti-camping ordinance and approving the installation of surveillance cameras in downtown.

For people that may not know, what is it that the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce stands for and against?

We want to create an atmosphere where economic prosperity can occur, and right now it's economic recovery. What we stand against is really the opposite of that. Our city is very business friendly, but our state is not.

We're frequently working with coalitions to help defeat anti business legislation. We have a multi pronged economic recovery plan that we're working on with the economic recovery task force we created earlier this year. One of the areas we're emphasizing is Stay and Play Local and that's a message we're trying to get out to the residents to support our local businesses. We have some features coming up in our magazine that's going out in July that we're highlighting activities and businesses that people can support locally.

The Economic Recovery Task Force is working on a variety of projects. We've put proposals into the city for the business community, including another round of grants, because there are still some great losses to be backfilled.

One quick win message we are launching right away is a window sticker that says, "What's happening in Oceanside" with a QR code linked to all the events happening in the community.

What else is coming up for the Oceanside Chamber?

Our Heroes of Oceanside event is coming up on June 24 and is going to be our first major events back in person. Normally we have six signature events that are spread out throughout the year. But we are going to do all six of our events between June 24 to October 14, including the return of Harbor Days to Oceanside.

In closing.

I'm very thankful that our community came together in the past year to support our businesses, from buying gift cards, takeout and so on. I think we have a community that is very supportive of our business and I'm very grateful for that.

Get more information about the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce.

Live in or near Oceanside? Click here to subscribe to our free breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox and mobile devices.

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Oceanside-Camp Pendleton Patch? Interested in advertising your business in Oceanside? Email any inquiries to me at lisa.frost@patch.com.