Thanks to Sticks of Fire and to Bizjournals for this article:
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2009/02/02/daily48.html
Looks like Florida Markets in general are all over the spectrum:
- No. 7 Orlando
- No. 12 Miami-Fort Lauderdale
- No. 20 Cape Coral
- No. 25 Jacksonville
- No. 43 Palm Bay-Melbourne
- No. 44 Bradenton-Sarasota
- No. 51 Daytona Beach
- No. 53 Tampa-St. Petersburg
- No. 81 Lakeland
It’s obvious to me why Lakeland would be so far down the list. High electric cost, political corruption, the CSX fiasco and every other mess-in-progress makes Lakeland a horrible place to live, let alone work. It’s also obvious to me why Detroit was dead last. Any place built on the failing auto industry and it’s support system is going to have issues with businesses of any size right now.
By why is Tampa so far down the list?
Bizjournals used a six-part formula to analyze the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, searching for the places that are most conducive to the creation and development of small businesses. These included Population, Employment, Small-Business Growth, Economy Prosperity, Rate of Expansion and Density of Small Businesses.
So, with all of that in mind, Tampa lands at #53. This surprises me, actually. There’s a lot of lower-cost places to rent here in commercial zones. We have a decent sized populous. I’ve seen a lot of small businesses thrive here. I notice it states Tampa-St. Petersberg, so it must obviously cover the entire bay area. Perhaps there’s some area of our region that really skews the numbers? Perhaps their idea of growth and success differs from mine? I also have to wonder how this compares to 5 years ago, or 10 years ago.
I’ll have to do some more research into this. I’m definitely surprised we’re so far down the list, especially compared to Orlando at No. 7. Could the house of mouse really make that big a difference?
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Dan Holm, 2 years ago
Denis –
This is definitely interesting….a lot of great companies have their start in the Tampa Bay area, many of which have since expanded nationwide.
Orlando’s rank doesn’t surprise me. With theme parks and restaurants popping up all over the place I would imagine that the launch of new hospitality companies is the #1 reason their rank is a 7.