Bridgeville-originating chamber rebrands as South West Regional

An old friend, so to speak, has a new name.

With its centennial just six years away, the organization that started as the Bridgeville Chamber of Commerce, later the South West Communities, now is called South West Regional.

“Since I’ve been with the chamber, our footprint has grown,” Mandi Pryor, executive director since 2017, said. “We have members in Mt. Lebanon. We have members all the way into Green Tree.”

Plus the participation crosses the county line, to the south.

“It just made sense to call us a regional chamber, so that we have our members who are in Canonsburg and Southpointe and Washington feel more included,” Pryor said.

With the change, she explained, comes an overhaul of aspects such as the website, acronym — SWR replaces SWC — and logo.

“They had a great logo and design by Blank Printing in the ’90s, and now it’s time to tweak it, upgrade it a little bit,” she said. “We’ve darkened the colors to navy blue from the lighter blue that we’ve had in the past.”

And South West’s long-standing image of a person propping up a sketch of chamber headquarters is being propelled squarely into the 21st century as a three-dimensional rendering by Carnegie website designer Higher Images, which she described as “kind of like a Sims version.”

“We have to look into what the chamber is going to be like in five or 10 years,” Pryor said. “A lot of it’s digital now. A lot of chamber members need more of a footprint with social media, and we’re here to support them that way.

“Yes, we have our traditional network events, which are important. But we’re also making sure they’re meeting other members online.”

The South West Regional Chamber of Commerce office continues to be located at 990 Washington Pike, Collier, within what once was a West Penn Power substation. In the 1990s, chamber members volunteered to renovate the quaint, compact building, just across McLaughlin Run from Bridgeville.

With the growth of the area surrounding the borough in the decades following the chamber’s inception, the reorganization was rebranded once before to reflect its emphasis on businesses in seven core municipalities, also including Carnegie, Heidelberg, Scott, South Fayette and Upper St. Clair.

“We’re taking more of a broad approach to it, which I think will be more welcoming,” Pryor said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to shy away from working directly with our local communities. Our boroughs and townships are very, very important to us.”

So are local educational institutions. For example, the chamber recently awarded scholarships to Elisabeth Masztak and Akshara Murali, 2022 graduates of Chartiers Valley and South Fayette Township high schools, respectively.

The scholarship was established in 2003, according to the chamber website, “with the belief that our future businessmen and women should be aided in furthering their education, thereby enabling them to accomplish their goals and aspirations, allowing them to give back to their communities in the future.”

For more information about the chamber of commerce, visit southwestcommunitieschamber.org.