Corvallis > Seattle?
Other than Corvallis having a better restaurant (Local Boyz) and a better baseball and football team’s (Oregon State), there’s not to much I would say Corvallis beats Seattle in.
However, Fortune has just announced that Corvallis is the 48th best place to “Live and launch a company in 2008.“ I have known some great companies to be founded, created, and launched in Corvallis, but wow I just am still not used to seeing Corvallis mentioned in a financial magazine like Fortune.
To see that Seattle is not even on the list seems a little crazy to me. Especially with Bellevue being names the number 1 city on the list! Bellevue is a great city if you’re into living in the ‘burbs, but it just seems that Seattle is such a better city for finding and keeping the young tech savvy workers happy. Other notable cities in the Northwest, Portland (#6), Bellingham (#26), Eugene (#96, Yes, the Beavers win).
HT: John Cook’s Blog
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Comments
Without reading the Fortune article, I can only presume that they treat the rankings like they have in the past. The ideal person is not you or me, but someone who is older and might have kids. Additionally, cost of living is included in that factor, and while being in the city is great for the life it offers to us, having access to that life is good enough for cities in which business starters would actually “live.”
No, I am not going to argue that Corvallis, Bellingham, and Bellevue are better places to live for someone in our age bracket, but when we look at school districts, housing costs, yard size, and similar constraints on the search that include accessability to the big city benefits, one can start to see some of the reasons the aforementioned cities are better options than Seattle for a 45+ year old person with a spouse, 2.5 kids, a dog, and more.
By the way, the only reason that Corvallis offers better sports teams is because they are college rather than professional teams - the NFL and MLB (two opening days…that is getting greedy and taking advantage of our Japanese friends, eh?). Who are we kidding if we were to say that Seattle has an NBA team anymore. Just having a team name and team colors does not do much for the city or the arena and taxpayers that do not want them. Maybe Seattle will take the Atlanta Hawks!?!
Clearly, this article was written out of total ignorance. Bellingham? Bellingham is the worst possible place to start a business. It is a good place to live though.