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Franchot "Frenchy" Lee can remember the days when he felt like an insignificant speck at Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce meetings.
"You would go downtown, and it was like an old-boy network," recalls Mr. Lee, owner of the Nature's Lane flower shop and a 15-year member of the chamber. "It was all about who was there first and who had a bigger company."
Since then, Mr. Lee's business has changed, and so has the venerable Brooklyn chamber, which will mark its 80th anniversary next year. After being a Brooklyn Heights future for years, Mr. Lee moved into the MetroTech Center, which, following its 1990 opening, has given downtown Brooklyn a shot of Manhattan-style hustle and bustle. So has the chamber, now occupying an unassuming suite at 7 MetroTech.
In the two years since Kenneth Adams became its president, the chamber has aggressively recast itself as an activist champion of small business. The results have been impressive: Its roster of member businesses had grown to 850 last month from 618 in January, a jump of 38%.
The work of Mr. Adams and his staff--most notably Jennifer Adolph Blum, his government relations and communications director, and...