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"We're very pleased by it," Mayor John Medinger said Friday of the recent ranking. Others recently have given La Crosse high ratings, he said, such as Inc. Magazine, which earlier this year ranked La Crosse as the 17th-best small metro area in the nation for doing business.
"I think it's indicative of the fact the city of La Crosse is headed in the right direction, both as a place to live and to do business," Medinger said. He distributed copies of the Forbes magazine ranking to La Crosse Common Council members at their meeting Thursday night.
"I'm not surprised" by the Forbes ranking, said James Hill, executive director of the La Crosse Area Development Corp.
"That kind of judgment has been made over and over about this area. That it's a great place to make a home and have a family and establish a career."
LADCO uses such rankings to promote the La Crosse area to prospective businesses.
Madison was ranked first among the nation's 150 largest metro areas. Forbes also ranked 168 smaller metro areas.
Factors considered included the number of residents with advanced college degrees, cost of doing business, cost of living, crime rate, culture and leisure, educational attainment, income growth, job growth and net migration.
The city's high ranking "is not very surprising, given what they were ranking them on," said Bill Brockmiller, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's regional labor market analyst in La Crosse. "It's certainly good news."
Brockmiller said, "Some things like educational attainment can really make the area excel" in such rankings.
"We've got a wonderful step one, getting the education, with three fine institutions of higher learning," Brockmiller said, referring to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Western Wisconsin Technical College and Viterbo University. "Step two is attracting and retaining employers who use that education and training," Brockmiller said, adding the area has made progress in doing that.
Steve Cahalan can be reached at (608) 791-8229 or scahalan@lacrossetribune.com.
