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Neubert a man about Columbia
 Gary Neubert, of Columbia, is the president of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce. Maggie Beck/Union Democrat, copyright 2011 “I love the people in this town,” Neubert said on a sunny Saturday in February as he chatted with a passer-by and checked out one of the new handicapped-accessible walkways being built around town. He describes himself as a city boy until moving to Columbia five years ago. Now, he considers himself part of the small-town atmosphere of the state park and surrounding area. He is president of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce. “I went camping one day and missed a meeting. When I got back, I found out I was elected,” he said with a smile that indicated he didn’t really mind. He is also on the board of directors of Friends of Columbia, the volunteer fundraising group that runs the Columbia Museum on Main Street and holds several special events during the year to pay for interpretive aids and meet other needs of the park. He said raising money is crucial in these days of decreased state funding and Gov. Jerry Brown’s threat to close many state parks, including Railtown 1897 in Jamestown, just a few miles away. “It would be hard for them to close Columbia,” Neubert said. “It’s a real town.” Columbia grew out of gold diggings during the California Gold Rush and was made a state park in 1945 at the urging of area residents who wanted to preserve the Mother Lode’s most intact Gold Rush town. While the state owns most of the land and many buildings, the business owners are concessionaires who have contracts with the state, wear period clothing and conduct their businesses in a way that reflects the Gold Rush era. Neubert was born in Tampa, Fla., and graduated from the University of Florida in 1973 with a degree in accounting. His early career included working with such well-known companies as Price Waterhouse and United Press International. He traveled the world for UPI, taking care of the company’s physical assets outside the United States. After UPI filed for bankruptcy in 1991, he went home to Tampa, worked as a consultant and did day trading on the stock market. That’s where he got interested in eBay in the mid-1990s. He had a cousin who sold shipping supplies and realized that was exactly what everybody who sold on eBay needed. He started Gatorpack Shipping Supplies, selling to people who sold such things as VHS tapes and trading cards. “It was a robust time,” he said. “I started in the spare room of my house and eventually had a warehouse and six employees.“ He met former eBay CEO and 2010 gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman when she invited him to be part of a customer focus group in San Jose in May 2002. He attended the first eBay live convention in Anaheim, and she invited him to lobby in Washington, D.C., on issues about Internet commerce. One of the highlights, he said, was sitting down at a dinner with keynote speaker John McCain on one side of him and Whitman on the other. During that time, he met the late Katie McMahon, then a community development specialist for eBay, and they became friends. She owned Columbia Kate’s, a Victorian tea house, a block off Columbia’s Main Street, and convinced Neubert to visit. Around 2005, the price of oil skyrocketed, pushing shipping costs up, and Neubert decided to arrange for shipments to go directly from the wholesalers to customers instead of repacking them himself. “Now my business became virtual, and I could do it anywhere,” he said. “I still run it, but now I live in Columbia.” McMahon also convinced another eBay entrepreneur, Clare Bazley, to move to Columbia. Bazley took over the tea house when McMahon retired, and she and Neubert became a couple. He was the chef at the tea house until they hired others to do the cooking. McMahon died in 2008 at age 56. Neubert sees a bright future for his adopted hometown despite dwindling state support. He and others are working to build a new, interactive website to give Columbia a more prominent Internet presence. He also hopes to rekindle a relationship with Columbia College, which had a strong presence in the state park at one time, with advanced hospitality students working there as interns. |
