The national conversation about the future of free enterprise made a stop in Harrisburg last Thursday, bringing business leaders together for a candid discussion about what it takes to start, grow, and sustain a business in the region today.
The Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC and PA Chamber of Business and Industry welcomed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Free Enterprise Express Opportunity Tour to downtown Harrisburg on September 24. Following a stop at the Pennsylvania State Capitol, regional employers, entrepreneurs, and economic development leaders gathered at Strawberry Square for an invitation-only roundtable focused on the opportunities and challenges shaping the region’s economy.
The Harrisburg visit was part of the U.S. Chamber’s six-week Free Enterprise Express tour, traveling through 20 states and hosting more than 50 events to highlight the businesses, workers, and entrepreneurs driving economic growth in communities across the country.
For Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC President & CEO Ryan Unger, the visit also represented a connection that stretches back more than a century.
The Harrisburg business community was among those that helped establish the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the early 20th century, and the Harrisburg Regional Chamber remains part of the national Chamber federation today.
But Thursday’s conversation was focused squarely on what comes next.
A Regional Economy Growing and Navigating New Pressures
Business leaders described a regional economy with significant strengths: a growing population, a strategic location, major health care and professional-services sectors, manufacturing, logistics and distribution, and a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.
At the same time, they identified mounting pressures affecting their ability to grow.
Brad Jones, President & CEO of Harristown Enterprises, pointed to rapidly escalating construction costs as one example.
Harristown has increasingly converted underused downtown office space into housing, including projects that have helped bring new residents and businesses into downtown Harrisburg. Jones noted that rising construction costs, interest rates, and material prices are creating growing financial pressures for development projects and can ultimately determine whether transformational projects move forward at all.
Those costs- compounded by interest rate, material prices, and other development challenges- can ultimately determine whether transformational projects move forward at all.
The discussion reinforced a challenge the Chamber has been examining throughout 2026: housing is not simply a residential issue. The availability and cost of housing directly affect employers’ ability to attract and retain workers and communities’ ability to support continued economic growth.
Entrepreneurship Is Alive and Growing
There were also clear signs of optimism.
South Central Regional Director at Ben Franklin Technology Partners Joe Hackett discussed the growing number of entrepreneurs exploring new business concepts and the increasingly prominent role artificial intelligence is playing in those ideas.
Other business owners around the table described continued opportunities in hospitality, professional services, financial services, technology, and food production.
For Jamie Berger, Founder & CEO of C&J Catering, hospitality offers a particularly important entry point into the workforce.
“Hospitality is the front door for everyone,” Berger said, describing an industry that can introduce workers to skills and experiences that create pathways to entrepreneurship and other careers.
Berger also pointed to the opportunities hospitality can create for workers at different stages of their careers, particularly as the industry continues to grow and evolve.
AI Is Changing Work- But Not Necessarily Eliminating It
Artificial intelligence emerged as one of the morning’s most wide-ranging discussions.
Participants described businesses using AI to improve underwriting, strengthen fraud detection, increase productivity, develop new products, and build entirely new companies.
But the conversation also highlighted an important distinction: adopting AI does not necessarily mean replacing workers.
One example shared during the discussion illustrated how AI can be used to handle more routine processes efficiently, allowing employees to focus their time and expertise on more complex situations that require greater analysis, judgment, and human interaction.
Business leaders also discussed the need to prepare workers for jobs that will change as AI becomes more widely adopted, while considering how organizations can capture productivity gains without simply adding more to employees’ plates.
The U.S. Chamber has identified AI adoption as an important issue for small businesses nationally and has advocated for a consistent federal framework that allows businesses to innovate without navigating a patchwork of different state and local regulations.
The Relationships Behind a Growing Business
Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of free enterprise came from one of Harrisburg’s own growing companies.
Denim Coffee began in Shippensburg and has expanded throughout Central Pennsylvania, including its newest location at Market Square in downtown Harrisburg.
Co-founder Matt Ramsay described a cup of coffee as the final product of an enormous network of farmers, processors, transportation companies, property owners, employees, and countless others whose work ultimately comes together in something as seemingly simple as a morning cup of coffee.
“What you see is the endpoint of about 40 hands that have touched this product,” Ramsay said. “It is a logistics challenge, but at the heart of it, it’s really farmers.”
The same is true of building a business.
“Anything that we touch is because of relationships,” Ramsay said. “And that really is, at the heart of Denim Coffee, what wins the day.”
For Denim Coffee, those relationships have included Harristown, whose investment in converting downtown properties has created new opportunities for businesses like Denim Coffee, as well as connections made through the Chamber and the region’s broader economic development ecosystem.
It was an example of what free enterprise looks like at the local level- not as an abstract economic concept, but as businesses investing in people, responding to changing markets, solving problems, and creating opportunities for one another.
Bringing Harrisburg’s Voice Into a National Conversation
The U.S. Chamber launched the Free Enterprise Express as part of a broader effort to bring conversations about economic growth and opportunity directly into communities across the country.
In Harrisburg, that meant listening.
Local leaders spoke candidly about health care costs, housing and development, workforce availability, education and career preparation, artificial intelligence, regulatory uncertainty, and the pressures facing small businesses.
Those conversations matter because the challenges facing businesses are often best understood by the people navigating them every day.
Unger also pointed to the unique role businesses can play in their communities, noting that even amid declining trust in many large institutions, people continue to look to businesses and their own employers to help solve problems. For the business community, he said, the opportunity is to continue finding ways to meet that responsibility while building and strengthening that trust.
For the Harrisburg Regional Chamber, ensuring those voices are heard is central to its role- connecting local employers with state and national partners and bringing the experiences of businesses in the Harrisburg region into conversations that shape the policies affecting them.
Thursday’s visit also underscored the value of the Chamber network itself.
From Harrisburg, to the Pennsylvania Chamber, to the U.S. Chamber, that network provides a direct line between the businesses operating in our communities and the conversations taking place in Harrisburg and Washington.
More than a century after Harrisburg business leaders helped build that network, the connection remains just as important: local businesses identifying challenges, sharing solutions, and helping shape an environment in which businesses- and the communities around them- can grow.
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ABOUT HARRISBURG REGIONAL CHAMBER & CREDC
For 140 years, the Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC has served as the region’s catalyst for economic prosperity. The organization combines business, community, and economic development services to enhance the region’s vitality and livability. The Chamber is a five-star accredited chamber through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a distinction held by fewer than 1 percent of chambers nationwide. CREDC is the region’s toolbox for economic development. It is the only Certified Economic Development Organization (CEDO) approved by the Commonwealth’s Department of Community and Economic Development to perform economic development activities regionally using Pennsylvania’s funding programs across Cumberland, Dauphin, and Perry counties.
