The Manhattan area Chamber of Commerce is organizing an InterCity Visit with Columbia, Missouri, scheduled for September 30th and October 1st in Columbia.

There are two benefits to participating in an InterCity Visit according to Lyle Butler, Chamber CEO/President.

“One is that you get to go to a community that’s similar to yours, but maybe a little bit larger, and they’ve had experience doing some activities, some programs, some creative ways that they’ve done something in their community,”said Butler. “I think our community can go and can learn some of those ways and then decide if they have any benefit to try them, or modify them, and try them in our own community.”

The second benefit would be the networking possibilities with people from the other communities.

The Chamber will be taking a bus to Columbia for the visit and space is limited to just 50 people.

“This isn’t generally open to the public, we’re not trying to hide anything, but we’re working on getting business people, local elected officials, and civic leaders in our community, a cross-section of those. We’re also going to include our partners in Geary County and Pottawatomie County to join us. We’re limiting it to 50. You get too much beyond that and it becomes difficult to move a large group of people around to get to the different venues and meetings in that InterCity community.”

The Chamber is looking to make this an annual event, either yearly or every other year, choosing between other cities across the nation of similar or slightly larger size.