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Two polls rate four Valley cities among best for business

August 23, 2006 — Four cities in the Tennessee Valley are listed among the best places in the nation to locate a company, according to rankings from Expansion Management magazine and Entrepreneur.com.

Among Expansion Management‘s Five-Star Business Opportunity Metros for 2006 are Knoxville and Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama. Memphis, Tennessee, was included on the magazine's Four-Star list.

The Five-Star and Four-Star lists represent a composite of a metro area’s various rankings in seven major categories compiled by the magazine over the past year. Those rankings compared all of the nation’s 362 MSAs in the areas of transportation, quality of life, state taxes and government spending, and other categories. In one category, the "50 hottest cities," Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Huntsville all earned high rankings from the corporate site location consultants polled.

The top 20 percent of the MSAs in all categories earned the Five-Star distinction. Metros that rank in the 21st to 40th percentile earned four stars. The rankings help business executives and site location specialists compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of the metro areas in those major categories, according to the summary by the magazine’s chief editor, Bill King.

See Expansion Management for more information about the rankings.

In another recent poll, the same four Valley cities were rated among the best in the nation for start-up companies by Entrepreneur.com. Among large cities, Memphis placed seventh and Nashville eighth. Among midsize cities, Knoxville was rated No. 9, and among small cities, Huntsville placed fifth.

The rankings were determined using the National Policy Research Council’s Entrepreneurial Activities Index, which measures business formation and survival. It counts the number of companies started four to 14 years ago that have at least five employees today and measures job growth in absolute numbers and percentages. The full listing includes 276 small, midsize, and large MSAs.

Entrepreneur.com also ranked the best states for entrepreneurs using the same criteria. Four Tennessee Valley states were among the top 10: Virginia, No. 2; Alabama, No. 3; North Carolina, No. 7; and Tennessee, No. 8.

See Entrepreneur.com for the complete listings.