The Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s 155th Annual Meeting on Thursday was a call to action and leadership.

Beginning with opening remarks by chamber President and CEO Natalie English and threading through the podium comments of the evening’s other speakers was the theme that Wilmington is poised for transformational growth, and that the business community must lead with vision and commitment to mold that growth.
 
“We encourage each of you to think of Wilmington as a ‘can-do’ community,” English later told her Wilmington Convention Center audience of several hundred in her closing remarks. She pledged the chamber to a “hyperfocus” on small business development as well as to building diversity and including all segments of the community in economic initiatives.
 
Keynote speaker UNCW Chancellor Jose Sartarelli (pictured below) took as his topic the “glorious future” he sees for Wilmington. He led the assembled chamber members through a brief history of the community, from Wilmington’s economic recovery after the loss of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1960 to recent expansions at the Port of Wilmington and Wilmington International Airport. He also highlighted positive developments at the University of North Carolina Wilmington during his six-and-a-half years at the helm.
 
“When I came here in 2015, I had two goals: to make the university bigger and better,” he said. “Growth without quality makes no difference.”
 
The chancellor cited UNCW’s 40% growth since 2009, the increase in incoming freshman SAT scores, the $767 million the university has raised or received during his tenure, and the new undergraduate and graduate programs – some of them cutting-edge – UNCW has launched during that time.
 
He emphasized the need for leadership and the cultivation of others to bring about positive change, applying that idea to how Wilmington can achieve that “glorious future” he envisions.
 
With growth of Wilmington’s three-county region projected to bring the region’s population to more than 800,000 by 2050, Sartarelli predicted that the coastal area from Myrtle Beach to Jacksonville will be “one whole city.”
 
“For those of us who like pristine water and low traffic, that means good planning to make life here better,” he said. He then outlined several initiatives he considers to be major ones: Project Gateway, Project Grace, the Rail Realignment project, the return of Brunswick County to the Wilmington MSA, replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and the development of Cape Fear River’s west bank.
 
“We have to fix the west side of the city, either for pleasure – it could be a park – or for apartments or mixed-use,” he said, adding that the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge “is getting a little old; it’s not fitting with the city.”
 
Becoming a leader equal to the task of accomplishing transformational change, Sartarelli said, requires hard work, empathy, strong interpersonal skills and the capacity to envision and imagine. And the values needed? “Ethics, ethics, ethics,” he added.
 
Replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge as well as the need for chamber members to step forward as leaders was on the minds of the evening’s other speakers: Spence Broadhurst, representing the meeting’s presenting sponsor First National Bank; Michele Holbrook, outgoing chamber board chairwoman; Neal Andrew, incoming board chairman; and Bob Warwick, recipient of Duke Energy’s Lifetime Achievement in Business Award winner.
 
Warwick was a member of the Wilmington’s Committee of 100 that helped recruit businesses to town following the departure of the Atlantic Coast Line. He noted that Wilmington’s higher education institutions and health care systems were prime factors in luring those companies. “Education and health care are key ingredients,” in a community’s growth, he said.