Development News From Southwest Indiana

Evansville ranks well for entreprenuers
By TOM RAITHEL Courier & Press staff writer , October 10, 2005

Evansville was rated the 29th best small city in the country for entrepreneurs in a recent issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.

The rankings placed Evansville ahead of most other small Indiana cities, including South Bend, Lafayette and Bloomington. Indianapolis and Fort Wayne were rated in the large city and medium-sized city categories.

"I think that Evansville did quite well," said Jim Holderread, deputy director of Vision-e, Evansville's economic development agency. In the future, his agency may use the information to help attract entrepreneurs or growing companies to the Evansville area, he said.

The ratings were done by Entrepreneur and the National Policy Research Council. The index is designed to measure the best places to start and grow a company.

The index is made up of two parts - business formation and business growth. Business formation is measured by the percentage of businesses started four to 14 years ago that employ five or more workers today. Growth is measured by the percentage of those young businesses that have experienced rapid growth over the last four years.

The two grades are combined to give a city its overall growth rating.

In the small city category, Evansville-Henderson placed 36th in business formation and 23rd in business growth for an overall rating 29. The only other Indiana city to place ahead of it was Elkhart-Goshen (20). Bloomington (36), Terre Haute (73), Muncie ( 92), South Bend, (93), Lafayette (94) and Kokomo (105) were also rated.

Among the best large cities for entrepreneurs, Indianapolis was ranked 5th. Cincinnati-Hamilton was ranked 13th and Louisville Ky.-Ind. was ranked 30th.

Among the mid-sized cities, Fort Wayne was ranked 25th.

Holderread said he was glad Evansville ranked ahead of many university cities in the small city category. The university cities it surpassed were, in addition to Bloomington, Lafayette and Muncie, Bryan-College Station, Texas, home of Texas A & M (48), Bloomington-Normal, Ill. (64), home of Illinois State University, and Champaign-Urbana (82), home of the University of Illinois.

Among states, Indiana ranked 21st. Additional information on the ratings can be found at www.entrepreneur.com/bestcities.

PO Box 20127, Evansville, IN 47708-0127 TEL: 812-423-2020 E-mail: info@swidc.org