Ogden, Utah at a Glance
Location: Northern Utah
Access: Salt Lake City International Airport, Ogden-Hinckley Airport, interstates 15 and 84, Utah Transit Authority train access
Major Meeting Spaces: Ogden Eccles Conference Center, Golden Spike Event Center, Union Station, The Monarch
Hotel Rooms: 1,357
Off-Site Venues: Snowbasin Ski Resort, Powder Mountain, The Ice Sheet at the Weber County Sports Complex, Union Grill, Copper Nickel
Contact Info:
Visit Ogden
800-255-8824
visitogden.com
With panoramic views of the Wasatch Mountains and a trailblazing spirit that dates back to its founding, Ogden, Utah, combines the peace of a cozy ski town with the amenities of a fast-paced city.
“Ogden is a beautiful mountain town with incredible history and access to nature,” said Taylor Hartman, director of marketing and communications at Visit Ogden.
Located about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, Ogden was a power player in the forming of the American West. In 1847 it became just the third U.S. city west of the Missouri River to be incorporated, after San Francisco and Salt Lake City.
“It’s a railroad town with a lot of railroad history,” Hartman said. “So there are a lot of historic buildings. Our historic main street is registered on the National Register of Historic Places, and it’s remarkably well preserved.”
The best of Ogden’s boomtown past is still visible on a walk down Historic 25th Street, which was once built to cater to 19th- and 20th-century passengers of the transcontinental railroad. Today, Ogden is no longer a rail hub, and Historic 25th Street is now a local hotspot packed with restaurants, bars, art and more. Historic 25th Street is also the location of its most popular meeting space, the Ogden Eccles Conference Center, which combines a modern convention center and an attached 1920s movie palace. Other high-traffic meeting locations include a sprawling indoor-outdoor events complex, a light-filled converted historic parking garage and the train station that was once the center of Ogden’s transit boom.
Ogden is also a college town: Weber State University boasts an array of meeting spaces and a Division I basketball team. The city is an outdoorsy escape, offering 170,000 acres of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, thousands of acres of lakes and popular boulder fields.
Ogden has a variety of unique meeting venues and off-site hotspots to explore, from repurposed slices of railroad history to recently built modern comforts to Olympic-worthy arenas.
Ogden Eccles Conference Center
Ogden’s main meeting venue is the Ogden Eccles Conference Center on Historic 25th Street. The center consists of two different spaces: the David Eccles Conference Center and Peery’s Egyptian Theater. The conference center features more than 70,000 square feet of meeting space. Peery’s Egyptian Theater, which seats 800, is a 1924 movie palace that has been restored to its original glory. Among its historic features is an atmospheric ceiling. “[The ceiling] looks like it’s daytime before a show starts,” Hartman said. “Then when the show starts, the sun will set and the lights will change and then the stars will come out.”
Only-In-Ogden Venues
Union Station, the city’s former transportation hub, offers up 22,000 square feet of meeting space. Another popular venue is the Monarch, a 57,000-square-foot space in a renovated 1920s parking garage. For meetings that demand even more room, the Golden Spike Event Center offers 150,000 square feet and includes two indoor arenas, a stadium, two exhibit buildings and more. For groups looking to hit the slopes between sessions, the meeting spaces at Snowbasin Ski Resort or Powder Mountain will do the trick. And for off-site gatherings, lively eatery Union Grill is a go-to, as is Copper Nickel, an industrial-chic raw space.
Meeting Hotels
A top hotel for attendees to rest their heads is the Hampton Inn and Suites Ogden, which is located adjacent to the Ogden Eccles Conference Center and just steps away from all the action of Historic 25th Street. Other popular hotels include the Courtyard by Marriott Ogden, which offers about 3,200 square feet of event space; the historic Bigelow Hotel and Residences, which has 8,600 square feet of space; and the Hilton Garden Inn Ogden, which features over 2,025 square feet of meeting space.
Off-Hours Adventures
When meetings are done for the day, Ogden offers a collection of restaurants, bars, shops and galleries. “We have a lot of live music, art, saloons and drinking holes,” said Hartman. “We were that way with the railroad. There were a lot of places for people to get off the train, wet their whistle, have some fun and then get back on. And we’ve kept that legacy.” Active visitors will love Ogden’s 11,600 ski-friendly acres, 210-mile hiking and biking trail, and the Ice Sheet, an arena used during the 2002 Olympic Games.
