To say that the COVID-19 pandemic changed things is an understatement.

Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Chuck Leonhardt has spent a decade at the chamber and saw one of those major shifts firsthand.

He noted that when he started in August 2015, the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce had 535 members versus 997 members today.

“Our economy has been pro-business, especially for here,” he said. “We grew a ton before COVID.”

Leonhardt said that there was a noticeable trend in the first few years of his time at the Chamber.

“Most of our growth, pre-COVID, was big business,” he said. “We had a lot of manufacturing growth happening, we had a lot of aerospace growth, this big build up for the missile defense system — all of that was happening.”

But then came a major shift during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As soon as COVID hit, big businesses slowed way down in Weber County,” Leonhardt said. “Now we have one or two large businesses that might come into Weber County every year compared to pre-COVID; there was five, six, seven (per year).”

However, he said that hasn’t meant total gloom and doom for the county’s business sector — far from it.

“Business still has grown in Weber County as far as the number of business startups, but it’s changed,” he said. “Now it’s small businesses, meaning 100 or less employees.”

Leonhardt said there are 130 organizations throughout Weber County that have more than 100 employees.

“It’s not a ton, so every one of them is precious — that’s everything from Hill Air Force Base to Weber State to Williams National to Fresenius,” he said.

He added that while there may not be as many of these larger businesses moving into Weber County, many of the ones that are here have been doing something critical as the world has emerged from the worst of the pandemic.

“What we’ve been finding lately is there’s been a huge reinvestment in our big businesses that are currently here,” he said. “At Fresenius, they’ve created a huge plant out there and they’ve doubled down on their production, the number of employees, how they’re training, how they’re doing things — they’re very innovative, actually.”

Other larger businesses Leonhardt said are making large reinvestment pushes locally include Chromalox, which doubled the size of their current production facility; Williams International, which is adding square footage and 300 new jobs to its Ogden facility; and Northrop Grumman, which is adding 1,000 new employees in Weber County.

“These companies can find other places to go, but they decide (to stay),” he said. “We have the perfect synergy, I believe, of workforce, transportation systems and technology availability. It’s core to who we are as an industrial city.”