Mount Pleasant Magazine Fall 2011

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Expo, scheduled for Sept. 8 at the Omar Shrine Temple.
The expo will give MPBA members and additional
Mount Pleasant companies the opportunity to market
their products and services to other businesses and to a
crowd that is expected to surpass the 500 mark.
MPBA and the town of Mount Pleasant are working
together in other ways, as well. For example, the group
holds a members-only nighttime networking session each
month, an event that is sponsored jointly by the town once
a quarter. And Quin Stinchfield, the town’s business de-
velopment and tourism coordinator, also serves as MPBA’s
events coordinator.
According to Garris, who took over as president of MPBA
in January 2011, the organization strives to provide its 100
or so members with information, advocacy and education.
“MPBA brings together businesses and professionals
to work together to help us all succeed,”
Garris said. “The last couple of years we’ve
been moving more toward networking and
strengthening our partnership with the
town of Mount Pleasant.”
She pointed out, however, that the group’s
most important job is to do everything pos-
sible to help local businesses prosper.
Is the Mount Pleasant
Business Association a group
of community leaders who get
together once a month to social-
ize, eat lunch, listen to a speaker,
network and discuss ways to
grow their businesses? Or is it a
philanthropic group that gives back to the
community by donating
money to local charities?
Maybe MPBA’s focus is education; after all,
the group awards up to $5,000 each year in
college scholarships to deserving local high
school students.
It’s possible that the organization, estab-
lished in 1992 as the Mount Pleasant Mer-
chants Association, is all of the above and
well on its way to being the closest thing
the fourth largest municipality in South
Carolina has to a chamber of commerce.
MPBA, which meets the third Thursday of the first 11
months of the year at the Holiday Inn on Highway 17,
always has had a cordial relationship with the town of
Mount Pleasant. It’s been a tradition for the mayor, Billy
Swails now and Harry Hallman before him, to speak to the
business group at least once a year, a meeting that regularly
draws a large crowd. MPBA’s relationship with the city has
grown tighter in recent years, however, due in part to a close
alliance between MPBA’s leaders and the town’s Community
Development and Tourism Office.
“The town has always supported
us,” MPBA President Shawna
Garris, assistant vice president at
Tidelands Bank, commented. “But
now the Community Development
and Tourism Office provides an av-
enue for the town to work on more
projects with us. They are trying
to support business and bring new
industry to Mount Pleasant.”
That avenue leads directly to a joint project of the town
and MPBA – the first of what is expected to be an annual
event – the Mount Pleasant Entrepreneur and Business
BY BriaN SherMaN
MPBA
Helping Mount Pleasant Businesses Prosper
MPBa honored its scholarship winners May 19. Left to right: Danielle Greir, Shannon
McGue, Shannon Turner, Mackenzie hutchins and Mayor Billy Swails. at the podium is
MPBa Charity/education Committee Chair Jason Biggs.
Networking
MPBa President Shawna Garris