# Conway Area Chamber of Commerce The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce is the business-membership organization for the Conway, Arkansas area. The Chamber and the [[Conway Development Corporation]] operate as paired institutions with overlapping staff and shared offices — both housed at 900 W Oak Street, Conway 72032 — and together comprise the "developer-facing" institutional cluster on [[The Conway Data Center Project|Project Stratus]]. The Chamber presented the Project Stratus MOU to City Council on April 1, 2025, with [[Brad Lacy]] and [[Jamie Gates]] sharing the presentation; both gentlemen also represented their employer in the [[2025-04 Conway City Council Adopts O-25-37 O-25-38 and O-25-39|April 22, 2025 rezone and annexation hearings]]. ## Roles in this corpus - **MOU presenter.** [[Brad Lacy]] addressed the April 1, 2025 Special City Council Meeting ([[Project Stratus MOU and April 1 Special Council Meeting]]): "this community development project is larger and more involved than has been common. … This MOU is different in that it involves three entities and the company: the company, the City, Conway Corporation and the Conway Foundation." Lacy was the Chamber's primary spokesman to Council and declined to identify the Company by name. - **MOU drafter / coordinator.** [[Jamie Gates]]'s April 1 [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence]] memo to Council was sent from Gates's Chamber email (`[email protected]`) and shows the Chamber as the coordinating party on the multi-party MOU. The memo references Gates's prior coordination with Conway Corporation's Bret Carroll. - **Economic Development Committee participant.** Per the City Council's standing-committee structure, the Economic Development Committee is jointly composed of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, the Conway Development Corporation, the Conway Downtown Partnership, and Conway Corporation. ## People - [[Brad Lacy]] — Conway Area Chamber of Commerce; presented the MOU to City Council April 1, 2025. - [[Jamie Gates]] — Conway Area Chamber of Commerce / [[Conway Development Corporation]]; primary developer-side spokesperson on Project Stratus. - [[Corey Parks]] — Chief Economic Development Officer, Conway Development Corporation / Conway Area Chamber of Commerce. - Jenifer Kendrick — Conway Area Chamber of Commerce; cc'd on Stratus emails. ## Notes Staff hold dual roles at the Chamber and CDC; email signatures cite both organizations interchangeably. For corpus-bookkeeping purposes, the wiki treats the Chamber and CDC as distinct but tightly-paired institutions. Where a specific testimony or memo was authored under one organization's name, that organization is credited; where the staff member's role spans both, both are linked. The Chamber's role in the Project Stratus pre-application period parallels its role in [[The Port of Little Rock Data Center|Project Boar]] at the [[Little Rock Port Authority]] — where [[Bryan Day]]'s 2026-05-26 production confirmed that "the chamber did [sign the NDA] on our behalf" (the [[Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce]], analogous to Conway's Chamber here). Both projects appear to follow the **Chamber-as-NDA-holder** pattern, where the local Chamber serves as the developer's nondisclosure counterparty during the recruitment phase. Whether the Conway Area Chamber signed an NDA on Project Stratus on behalf of any City entity is not established in this production. The Chamber's records, like CDC's, are outside the City Clerk's custodianship and would have to be sought directly. The Chamber is a private organization; its records-access posture under Arkansas FOIA depends on whether it receives substantial public funding under § 25-19-103. The Chamber's separate web presence and any public-facing publications referencing Project Stratus are a Tier-3 archive opportunity not pursued in this ingest.