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Businesses in the downtown core and West Side of Des Moines soon will have new avenues through which to network with other businesses and express their needs to a regional group.

Leaders in the two districts are creating chambers of commerce and will host their first meetings this fall. The Greater Des Moines Partnership spurred the move as a way to focus on regional efforts and still give the two business districts that were under its umbrella a voice with its other chamber affiliates in Central Iowa.

“We were kind of serving dual roles for several years,” said Mary Bontrager, executive vice president of community development for the Partnership. “We were the chambers for those businesses located downtown and the western side that didn’t have a local chamber, and yet we were still tasked with this regional objective.”

Bontrager said the move came after the Partnership looked at its relationships with its 21 affiliate chambers, 17 of which are based in specific geographic locations, last year and decided to focus more regionally, offering its affiliate chambers’ members automatic membership into the Partnership. This left the downtown and west side of Des Moines without representation, especially at the Partnership’s monthly meetings with all of its affiliate chambers.

The Des Moines Downtown Chamber of Commerce has had to work hard to define its mission with respect to the many groups already focused on downtown. While the Downtown Community Alliance, which is under the Partnership, will continue to promote downtown as a place to live, work and play and foster economic development, the chamber will focus on developing business-to-business connections through networking events, lunch-and-learns and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

“This is something really exciting for this area and it’s going to instill a service businesses weren’t able to get in the past or at least at the level we’re hoping to provide,” said Anne Moeller, associate vice president and consumer services manager for Bankers Trust.

Moeller took the reins in starting the chamber and is supported by the newly formed board that also includes Tiffany Tauscheck of the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau, Drew McLellan of McLellan Marketing Group and Mark Barkley of Robert Half Management Resources. In the past six months, the board has been writing bylaws and doing other administrative work. It will host its first public meeting Sept. 23 at the Cub Club at Principal Park.

Though it is using other chambers as models, Moeller said the Downtown chamber differs in that it encompasses a diverse range of businesses. It also is not confined to a

geographic location, but rather invites anyone with a connection to downtown to join.

Meanwhile, the Des Moines West Side Chamber of Commerce has defined its reach as the area east of 63rd Street, south of Forest Avenue, north of the Raccoon River and west of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.

Ted Irvine, owner of The Mansion of Central Iowa, said he got invovled when he ran into Doug Reichardt and Steve Lacy, both of whom are on the Partnership’s executive committee, at Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure and they asked for his help. Since then, Matt Meline, a financial consultant with Wells Fargo & Co., has joined Irvine as co-leaders. Soozie McBroom of French Way Cleaners, attorney Jane Lorentzen and Steve Purcell of Mediacom Communications Corp. also have been helping. The Partnership is working on finding representatives from the Drake University area and Roosevelt shopping district as well.

The founders are still hammering out details, but expect to have their first public meeting this fall.

“Mostly what we want to do is just create a forum for businesses to be able to communicate with each other and make sure we have a strong voice in the community,” Irvine said.