Cape Coral, Fort Myers among best cities for business relocation

By MATT BLUMENFELD, mblumenfeld@breezenewspapers.com

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

 

A new study by a national business magazine has ranked the Fort Myers/Cape Coral area as one of the country’s best destinations for relocation. According to a press release, the rankings, which were published in the latest issue of Expansion Management magazine, were “based on analysis of the relocation activity of 19 million companies over the past eight years.”

In the release, Bill King, the chief editor of the magazine, said that a city’s high ranking in the study was a “validation that its local economy is on the right track.”

The study’s ranking was based on two measures — the relocation rate and the new branch rate. Businesses that moved operations to another market over the past eight years were included in the relocation rate, and the new branch rate was calculated from the new businesses that opened over that same period of time compared to the amount of total companies in the market.

For a city to earn a high rank, the release stated that it “must have a relatively high percentage of business facilities that have physically relocated to the area.”

The news came as no surprise to Cape Coral Assistant Financial Director Christie Vogt, who said that the latest news comes on the heels of other endorsements.

 

 


 “This follows several publications that have rated this area as one of the top places to do business and relocate,” she said.

Vogt claimed that the Milkin Institute rated the metro area as the third best in the nation for business and that Fort Myers/Cape Coral was tops on the Inc. Magazine list. She said that business owners are deciding to use the advantages of the Southwest Florida region. “If they can do it anywhere, they might as well do it here.”

Though the unemployment rate in the region is very low, the constant influx of white collar workers attracts businesses to the area.

“Business owners are finding that the market is here and the workforce is here,” said Vogt.

Companies are also enticed to relocate to the metropolitan area by the relatively low commercial tax rate. For its part, the Cape is trying to keep some of the businesses on its side of the bridge, according to Vogt. She said that she knows that workers would also appreciate remaining in Cape Coral and avoiding long commutes in the mornings and evenings.

 

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