The Columbia Association is looking for new ways to reach out to local businesses and into their pockets.

The association is hoping to get local businesses to buy memberships for their employees to its facilities, and President Maggie J. Brown said she also is interested in putting together an advisory board of business leaders that could help give the business community's input on Columbia issues.

With residential build-out for Columbia near, the business community is seen as an obvious and effective source to expand the association's near-$50 million budget. But business leaders are a group that historically has had little input in the development of the planned town.

Now, Brown said, that might change.

"When you start thinking about the business environment ... there are so many things the Columbia Association does that could be enhanced," Brown said. "Maybe there are programs and services we do that the business community might be interested in taking a role in."

The Columbia Association has long encouraged business use of its facilities by offering reduced-rate memberships to Columbia employers. In the past few years, the program generated more than $1.5 million for the association, with 30 of the county's 5,000 businesses joining as members. The goal is to increase corporate memberships by about $500,000 annually, an association official said.

The association's only revenue streams are tax assessments on commercial and residential property, and the fees residents and businesses pay to use its facilities. Because the tax rate is fixed and fewer homes will be built in the community than in the past, corporate involvement could be crucial.

"Here, growth is going to come from companies that move into the area and companies that are already here," said Candace Dodson Reed, corporate relations manager for the Columbia Association. "This is the only way to grow because companies will always come in and out of office space."

As a means of reaching out to the business community, Brown said, she soon will be calling together a group of business leaders to brainstorm about ways the business community and the association could help one another, with hopes that the group could become an advisory committee to the Columbia Association board.

She took up the idea after business leaders approached her months ago, saying they would like to be involved. She said she has no set agenda for the meetings.

"It'd be like hearing [from someone] you'd never asked directly what their thoughts might be," Brown said. "We just have not sat down [to see] what we might do together."

Businesses involved with the association through memberships in the organization's three gymnasiums say they could be very interested in getting more involved. Linda Reese, director of employee benefits for Ascend One Corp. in Columbia, said she would be eager to see what the association wants from the businesses community.