Northern Utah: Weber and Davis counties.

• Position: Regional Report - Interview

Like the rest of the state, Utah's northern Wasatch Front is feeling a hit; yet, leaders remain cautiously optimistic. In this regional roundtable, area experts discussed the revitalized downtown Ogden, commercial growth in Davis County, real estate hardships and education trends.

How is Northern Utah doing in general considering today's economy?

GODFREY: In the past eight years, Ogden has seen about $1.2 billion reinvested from the private sector. That investment has created more than 6,000 jobs in the past six years or so. In the past few years, our focus has been to revitalize downtown Ogden, because our belief is that that is the signature of a community and as goes your downtown, so goes the rest of your city. We've now completed more than 60 acres of redevelopment downtown and we currently have about 150 acres that are under redevelopment at this point.

We have, however, been challenged with the recession. Some projects have slowed down because the developers are having a hard time getting funding. Some projects actually had funding that was pulled off. So we have seen a slowing in the growth of downtown, but it has not stopped. People are still moving forward. Developers haven't given up. We're still recruiting jobs downtown. We're looking at a 4.4 unemployment rate, sales tax is down about 15 percent over last year and total revenues for the city are down about 4 percent for the year. Some good news is that we've added jobs recently. We've had The Hershey Company and Southern Classic--those two companies have added about 250 jobs. We also have more outdoor industry members that are coming here. Even given the economy, we're not changing strategies. We're going to keep after it while looking for opportunities.

PITT: It's been interesting to compare this year with last year. I think as businesses went into 2008, we thought we were absolutely at the top of the cycle. And, we were. I think a lot of the businesses were surprised at how quickly that turned around. Coming into 2009, after an initial hesitation, businesses are now recognizing that we're going to work our way out of this, so we've noticed an enthusiasm. From the Chamber's standpoint, we've had terrific response to our events. And, we've seen a burst of excitement, as businesses recognize that we're going to work through this.

We've seen growth in a lot of the sole proprietorship-type of businesses, probably because as some people have lost jobs, they've turned to their own initiative and then come to the Chamber for some networking support. Traditional retail has been weak, but with Farmington Station coming up, we think that we'll see growth start to pick up there again.

Overall, Davis County is on the verge of tremendous growth, we are just waiting for those doors to open up. And, we want to be prepared to make certain that as the doors do open, and as the hundreds of acres of business parks become ready to fill up, that we have the businesses lined up to do that.

HARDMAN: We are planning our work this year with cautious optimism, because there is a lot of optimism and opportunity. We take a survey periodically of our Chamber members. One indicator we measure is where our members are as far as expectation on employment. Moving from the June 2008 survey to the end of 2008, it went from about a 64 percent expecting employment to stay constant to 61.6 percent. And those anticipating increase in their employment is still at 24.7 percent. Now that's down from 32 percent mid year. And only 13 percent are anticipating a decrease in their employment in the next six months. So, we're still very optimistic as far as looking at planned growth.

Looking at their...