Bartholomew leads Prince William Chamber, vows to rebuild membership

Realtor C.C. Bartholomew is now the Chairman of the Prince William Chamber Board of Directors.

She will serve a term that began June 30, 2016, and will go to spring 2017. Bartholomew said growing the ranks of Chamber members will be her top priority.

“We need to seriously focus this year on growing our membership,” she said. “If those who left the Chamber see us and see us successful they will want to rejoin.”

The number of Chamber members has fallen in the past five years from a high of about 1,800 members to 1,311, according to Chamber spokeswoman Andrea Whaley.

The Prince William Chamber was born in 2010 after the merger of the Region’s Chamber in Woodbridge and the Greater Manassas-Prince William Chamber that was headquartered in Downtown Manassas. Today, the Chambers offices are located inside a very visible building on Capital Court in Manassas, just off Route 234.

Greater Washington Board of Trade President James Dinegar was the keynote speaker for the event that ushered in Bartholomew as Chairman, the annual State of the (Prince William) Chamber, held at the Heritage Hunt Golf Course in Gainesville.

Dinegar was upbeat about the anticipated growth for the region. He touted the Greater Washington, D.C. area as an area that attracts young workers armed with college degrees. The area also boasts a large number of immigrants that provide a diverse culture for the region.

“We don’t just ask where the Ethiopian restaurant is. We ask where is the best Ethiopian restaurant is,” said Dinegar.

Things are changing in the region, he added. Regan Washington National Airport now eclipses the once crown jewel of the area Dulles Airport as the region’s busiest airport serving 23 million passengers vs. Dulles’ 21 million.

Thurgood Marshall-Baltimore-Washington-International Airport beats them all with more than 24 million passengers per year. In seven to 10 years, Washington and Baltimore could be merged as a megaolpois, and the region could rely even more on Baltimore’s shipping ports than it does today, said Dinegar.

The high cost of living and transportation gridlock has forced some students who attend college in the Washington area to flee to places like Madison, Wis. to find work. He added more needs to be done to provide better transit connectivity between Maryland and Virginia on the states’ respective commuter railroads MARC and Virginia Railway Express.

“We don’t act like a region. We need to make better use of [the transportation infrastructure that] we have instead of trying to build us out of a hole,” said Dinegar.