2023_Fall_ValpoMagazine

NEW LOOK, NEW NAME, SAME MISSION | FREE ENTERPRISE CENTER
If [our members] need a place
to operate for a couple hours,
we've got some space that we
make available...
— Rex Richards
>> cubicles that figured prominently in
many of the Chamber’s videos over the
years. Implemented by many offices over
the past 10-20 years with the intention of
improving collaboration, some open office
layouts are now being reconfigured to offer
a little more privacy.
Replacing the open cubicles are a glassedin
conference room and a private office
for the organization’s CFO, while most of
the other staff members now have private
offices along the building’s east wall.
“We deal with a lot of businesses that are
thinking of expanding and growing, and we
have meetings in here, so you have to kind
of have some confidentiality. And so, by
moving most of the employees into private
offices, it makes it better for business,”
said Richards.
A Space Designed to Serve
Businesses of All Sizes
In addition to the offices of the Chamber,
the Free Enterprise Center also serves
as home to Valparaiso small businesses
Directions Wealth Management and GGNet
Technologies. The Chamber itself also
maintains some flexible office space for
use by Chamber members. “We have a
lot of members that are from out of town,
from Lake County, from La Porte County. If
they're over here doing business, and if it's
winter, it's raining and they need a place
6 FALL 2023 |
to operate for a couple hours, we've got
some space that we make available to our
members,” said Richards.
The upper level of the Free Enterprise
Center was renovated in 2013 to create
a conference center space, featuring one
large and several smaller meeting rooms.
“A lot of our members do not have space
where they can have conferences. This
conference space makes our building that
much more available to our members,” said
Richards. “We get tremendous usage of our
second level now.” The Independent Order
of Odd Fellows also continues to hold
meetings in the upstairs conference center.
A Prominent Place in the
Business Community’s Past,
Present and Future
Clocking in at 12,000 square feet, the
building itself has housed a wide variety
of businesses over the years. Built circa
1875, the building originally housed the
Grand Opera House, a venue for theatrical,
musical, and vaudeville performances.
After the 1891 opening and subsequent
popularity of the G. A. R. Memorial Opera
house forced the closure of the Grand
Opera House, the building housed a dry
goods business and then the Grand Opera
One-Price Clothing Store, the precursor to
Lowenstine’s Department Store. Over the
years, the building also housed a furniture
and undertaking business as well as Sears,
Roebuck and Co.
Today, the Free Enterprise Center occupies
a prime location along downtown
Valparaiso’s Lincolnway, right next to City
Hall and just steps from Central Park Plaza,
the Urschel Pavilion and a wide range of
restaurants and other small businesses that
the Chamber is proud to represent.
“We Wanted to be Where the
Action Is”
The city’s investments in a lively and robust
downtown over the past 20 years helped to
make the Chamber’s decision to invest in
the future at their current location an
easy one.
“I think what you have seen over the last
20 years in the downtown alone, with the
Urschel Pavilion, with the new Central Park
that we have, the band shell, everything that
the city’s done over the last 20 years has
been to strengthen and continue to improve
the downtown,” said Richards.
“This is a major investment in our
community, and I think that this
investment in the Chamber building shows
that the business community believes in
making a contribution of its own to the city
that creates so many opportunities
for businesses.”