OGDEN — The Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce has been going strong for decades.

Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Chuck Leonhardt noted that it’s even surpassed a century.

“The Chamber has a long legacy of business support ad development. The Chamber is 129 years old and next year will be our 130th year,” he said. “We’re debating with the Salt Lake Chamber who was the first chamber in the state.”

This week, the organization will even be celebrating its 110th annual gala.

In that timeframe, Leonhardt pointed out, the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce has also been key in securing land for some of the most important entities in the county.

“There are three distinct properties that the Chamber actually purchased that has made a huge impact on our commerce and economy over the last 100 years,” he said. “We purchased the property where the BDO (Business Depot Ogden) currently sits. It was known as the Defense Depot before BDO. That was purchased and given to the federal government. … The second property is where Hill Air Force Base is, the Chamber purchased that property. … Where Weber State University is, we purchased that property and gave it to the state of Utah so that we could have a college here in Ogden.”

But as with any organization that has experienced over a century of existence, the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce has also had its share of challenges.

Leonhardt said this was especially true when he first arrived at the Chamber a decade ago.

“When I came on, we had a financial problem with the Chamber,” he said. “We didn’t have enough members and our members weren’t making the investment into our business community to the level that they needed to be.”

He noted that, at the time, there were 535 members of the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce. This number has nearly doubled over the last 10 years with the count sitting at 997 members last Wednesday.

And bringing in these additional members and investments meant making the Chamber beneficial to them once again.

“The biggest challenge was recreating a benefit system for our members that was meaningful, something that they needed, saw as valuable and getting that communicated out to our business community and have them reinvest in the Chamber,” Leonhardt said.

Even a decade later, Leonhardt said challenges still exist despite the growth in membership — and they always will.

“Our challenges as a chamber organization (are) always going to be adding new members so that they can receive benefits and retaining existing members,” he said. “It was 130 years ago and it’s the same today and it will always be the same. We want more businesses to become part of this organization and we want them to stay.”

He said the local business landscape itself is still full of challenges as old as the concept of business as well.

“The biggest challenges are for startups to make it, to hang on and to survive,” he said. “There’s a huge need to support our businesses and they need support from a lot of different places.”