The LSEDC Board of directors is under new leadership. In July, Chip Moxley took over as Chair after nearly a decade of involvement in the organization. Moxley is the President of Tingle Flooring, a flooring distribution company that operates in seven states.

Tingle Flooring started as W.C. Tingle in 1946. A few years later, Moxley’s father joined the company and stayed with the business for nearly 50 years.

Despite his family roots, Moxley’s path to Tingle Flooring was not a straight line. The first nine years after he graduated from the University of Missouri Moxley worked as an accountant for major firms including PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG.

In 1989, Moxley left accounting to join Tingle Flooring. At the time, the company only operated in Western Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, but demand quickly blossomed and Tingle was faced with the challenge to scale up or risk losing one of its major vendors.

Tingle Flooring adapted to add offices in Denver and St. Louis. In 1999, Moxley moved the company from North Kansas City to Lee’s Summit.

“I couldn’t be more delighted now 20 years later in this area that I’m in because having 470 and be able to get into town or back out of town really works great,” Moxley said. “I think it works better from this side than about any side of the city [Kansas City Metropolitan] myself.”

The company now has added a new business, Summit Floor Supply, which specializes in industrial clients. There are now 140 employees between the two businesses with approximately ¾ of those employees in Lee’s Summit.

The first few years after moving the business to Lee’s Summit, Moxley was too busy with his business to join the LSEDC or other community organizations, but eventually he saw a need for his business and the community that he felt he could help with.

“As things settled down, I felt like the EDC was a very important organization for us to be involved with because at that time a lot of our efforts were dedicated toward infrastructure,” Moxley said.

Moxley said businesses, the EDC and the city united forces to make major improvements to Independence Avenue, allowing him to use the road for semi-trucks.

However, Moxley acknowledges that over time, the EDC has become much more multi-focused.

“The EDC is just a really top notch organization to be part of not only for great networking locally, but you get a ringside seat to what’s going on around the community,” said Moxley.

As Chair, he hopes to increase Lee’s Summit’s competitiveness in attracting new business through strides in developing certified-ready sites and buildings. He is hopeful new opportunities, such as the approximately 4,200 acres of land from Property Reserve Inc., could be a turning point.

“The community is well-known. It speaks for itself in many respects. But if you’re in a hurry and you need 100,000 square-feet of warehouse space, you can’t get it today in Lee’s Summit,” Moxley said. “My hope is that we have an opportunity with some of the new, developable properties perhaps coming on the market that we can see that type of development occurring.”

Moxley is also looking forward to the LSEDC’s upcoming strategic plan. Moxley says through the process, it is important for the LSEDC to look for opportunities to compliment the city’s strategic plan.

“It’s certainly a goal of my own when we do go through the strategic plan to identify which of those objectives we can best participate along with the city to accomplish those goals,” Moxley said.