FOLEY, Ala. — The Executive Committee of South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce in Foley has decided not to pursue merger talks with the Alabama Gulf Coast Area Chamber of Commerce in Gulf Shores.

That decision was made known to SBCC’s membership on Tuesday through an e-mail from Jerry Jackson, chairman of SBCC’s Board.

“The Committee’s efforts culminated in the Membership survey, the results of which we discussed at length during our Board meeting last Monday,” Jackson wrote.

“While the survey did indicate significant interest in a merger, the level of interest was not sufficient to give a clear mandate for merger.”

SBCC’s Executive Committee had hoped to release the results of its recent survey jointly with AGCACC’s survey results, “but practicality didn’t allow that, so we decided to let our membership know,” Jackson said on Wednesday.

Jackson said AGCACC’s survey results had not been released at that point to his knowledge.

“It’s safe to say from what we’ve heard that their results were similar to ours,” he said.

Sixty-eight percent, or 128, of the 187 chamber members who responded to the survey by SBCC said if they had to vote on a chamber merger “today” they would. Nearly 32 percent, or 59 respondents, said they would vote against a chamber merger. Six members failed to answer the survey question.

“It was a judment call from that vantage point,” Jackson said of evaluating the 68 percent who said they favored merging the two chambers.

While Jackson said any politician would take two-thirds of a vote any day of the week, two-thirds is not an overwhelming majority in a case such as this.

“We were hoping for a clear, strong majority of people who would indicate that and establish a mandate,” he said. “We felt like we needed an overwhelming opinion of membership to move it forward.”

Noting SBCC is a long established chamber, Jackson said a “lot of people are very protective of it” when it came down to talks involving merging with AGCACC.

While merger talks have come to an end between the SBCC and AGCACC leadership teams, Jackson noted in his e-mail that both entities “have agreed to actively explore matters of common interest and will seek to identify opportunities where our cooperative energies might benefit our individual Memberships.”

Asked Wednesday what Board members would do if enough SBCC members came forward in the months ahead and insisted on re-opening merger talks, Jackson said of the SBCC Board, “I suppose we would be obligated to look at it, but by the same token I don’t see that happening.”

If it was the same 68 percent of members who insisted, “that doesn’t change the calculus,” Jackson said.

“I obviously felt like it was a positive move,” Jackson said of a potential merger, noting he was not “neutral” on the subject.

But he also noted with SBCC’s biggest fundraiser of the year going on it was imperative that chamber members learn as quickly as possible that merger talks are at an end for now.

SBCC survey responses concerning merging the two chambers ranged from “Oil and Water, two very different agendas (sic) they simply don’t mix,” to “Not happening fast enough for me!”

Others questioned how a merged chamber could represent all the cities fairly, as in a case where a separate school system might emerge in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach or the coming of a healthcare facility to the coast that would compete with South Baldwin Regional Medical Center in Foley.

AGCACC Board Chairman Sean Chappell mentioned some of the same concerns in a Sept. 4, 2009, e-mail sent out to that chamber’s membership concerning the survey they sent out the following week. Different agendas and identities were among the concerns Chappell said he had heard from AGCACC Board members and chamber members, along with the school system and surgical center issues.

AGCACC’s survey was different from the one SBCC sent to its members. The survey link was no longer accessible this week and AGCACC did not respond to an e-mail on Thursday concerning their survey results.

In a telephone interview with Gulf Coast Newspapers the day before SBCC announced that merger talks were off, Raymond Towle, executive director of Political Affairs and Federation Relations with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., said mergers such as that proposed for SBCC and AGCACC occur on a “regular basis, albeit infrequently.”

Ralph Stacy, president/CEO of the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama, said the same thing this week. He called a merger of chamber bodies “not extraordinary” but something that doesn’t happen everyday. Among the examples he cited of chamber bodies merging was the 1993 merge in which the Orange Beach Chamber of Commerce merged with AGCACC.

“City limits aren’t the best delineation for a chamber,” Stacy said. “Trade area is.”

According to Stacy, the question to be asked by the local business community is, “Are you getting the greatest impact and return on your investment.”

Stacy said both SBCC and AGCACC had contacted the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama while talks were ongoing concerning a possible merger.

Asked Thursday if he was surprised by the decision of SBCC’s leadership team to discontinue merger talks, Stacy said he was “neither pleased nor saddened” by the decision.

Regarding chamber mergers, Towle said, “I really don’t see a downside.”

On the positive side, a merge is all about coming together for a common good and giving members “more clout,” Towle said. If there is a negative side, Towle said that would be in the fact “someone does get squeezed,” as in boards of directors.

Asked about what some see as differences between Foley and Gulf Shores/Orange Beach — Foley more industrial-minded and blue-collar and Gulf Shores/Orange Beach tourist-driven — Towle said it’s a matter of perspective.

“When you grow up and think about a region as a place to do business, you’re talking about growing jobs, industry, tourism and everything that has to do with being a culture.”