Why Relocate to Florida? Twelve (12) Florida cities make Forbes' list of "Best Places
for Business and Careers". The 5th annual survey ranks cities
based on income, job growth, cost-of-doing business, available labor
pool, crime rates, housing costs and net migration. The Florida
cities that made the listing and their rankings: Sarasota (44),
Ft. Lauderdale (47), Jacksonville (48), Melbourne (51), Pensacola
(52), Orlando (56), Ft Myers (60), West Palm Beach (64),
Daytona Beach (75), Lakeland (85), Tampa (91), Miami, (130). Two Florida companies are awarded the 2003 Department
of Defense Nunn-Perry award. The prestigious award recognizes outstanding
partnerships between major defense department contractors and small
and disadvantaged businesses. The partnership between Fort Walton
Beach's Manufacturing Technology Inc. (mentor) and Pensacola-based
firm, General Precision Manufacturing (protege), is the
first Florida partnership to win the award. MTI is also the first
company in the nation to win the award as both a protege (in 2000)
and mentor. Five Florida hospitals rank among the Top 100 Most
Wired. The 5th annual survey polls the nation's hospitals and health
systems on their use of IT to address the key goals of safety and
quality, customer service, business processes, workforce and disaster
readiness. 1,128 hospitals were represented in the study. The five
Florida hospitals are Orlando Regional Healthcare (Orlando), Wuesthoff
Health System (Rockledge), Baptist Health Care (Pensacola),
Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables), Memorial Healthcare
System (Hollywood). Other Cities: Intel ranks eight Florida cities/regions among the
top 100 with the greatest wireless Internet accessibility. Florida's
"Most Unwired Cities" include Orlando, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale,
Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay, Jacksonville, Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater,
West Palm Beach, Sarasota-Bradenton, and Daytona Beach. The survey
is based on the number of public and commercial wireless access
points (hotspots), cell phone coverage offering wide area network
Internet access, and Internet penetration. Ten Florida cities make the "2002 America's Top
100 Places to Live" list. 5,100 communities were ranked based
on low crime rates, amenities (such as museums, theaters, sports),
peace and quiet, good schools, healthy economy and good neighbors.
The ranking Florida cities were Coral Gables, Crest View, Deltona,
Juno Beach, Lakeland, Naples, Ocala, Poinciana, Sarasota and West
Palm Beach. Miami ranks #1 as the best city for doing business
in Latin America. América Economia surveys top Latin American
executives annually. This year 74% of the 1,600 executives surveyed
picked Miami as their #1 choice. Miami-Dade County ranks third in the nation for business
growth. The county had one of the top numerical and percentage gains
in business establishments with employees between 2000 and 2001.
Sid Martin Biotechnology Development Incubator (BDI)
ranks #1 among national incubator programs for the amount of intellectual
property licensed into operations. The facility is one of 79 incubator
programs examined in the study. The BDI sample group also ranked
7th in terms of average employment growth of its companies and 4th
in terms of average equity investment. The BDI is operated by the
University of Florida’s biotechnology program. Tampa Bay named Mega-Market of the Year for the second
consecutive year. Tampa Bay had the most business “deals”
among the South’s seventeen states. Florida is home to 688,460 creative class employees
- the 4th largest number in the U.S. The research was conducted
by Arthur Adiarte of the Minnesota Dept of Trade and Economic Development
and Dr. Kevin Stolarick of Carnegie Mellon University and Catalytix,
and is based on the same methodology used to rank metro regions
in The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida also ranked 3rd for diversity
and 10th for high-tech. Tampa takes top honors in the 2002 Digital Cities
Survey. The city received top marks for digital democracy and online
services. The survey, conducted by the Center for Digital Government,
examined the use of IT among 125 cities. United Van Lines' 26th annual migration study indicates
that Florida is one of the top "high inbound" states in
the South. Florida, with 57.6% of moves inbound, has seen this inbound
trend every year since the study began in 1977. United Van Lines
is the nation's largest household goods mover. The annual study
is based on interstate household moves handled by United among the
48 continugous states. Full Sail is named one of the top 5 game-degree colleges
in the world. The college, located in Orlando, prepares students
for the digital entertainment industry. Four Florida companies rank among Fortune’s
100 best companies in which to work. The companies are Publix Super
Markets, Baptist Health Care, Baptist Health South Florida, and
JM Family Enterprises. Florida climbs a notch to the 4th most popular location
nationally for business in the Reader's Poll. Readers were asked
to give the top states they would consider for expansions based
on criteria such as transportation access, workforce training and
incentives programs. Florida also ranked 6th most popular in the
Bizsites survey. For the third time, Jacksonville tops the list of
Expansion Management magazine's ranking of "America's 50 Hottest
Cities". The ranking is based on a poll of 75 of the country's
top site location consultants. The River City has always been ranked
the top 10 since the magazine began the survey in 1999. South Florida SBA District ranks
2nd in the nation. By increasing financial assistance to entrepreneurs
by 92 percent in the first nine months of fiscal 2003, the U.S.
Small Business Administration's South Florida District has won the
second-place ranking among 70 district offices in the country.
Miami (#12) and Tampa (#16) rank high among America's
most literate cities. The study creates a literacy profile of the
nation’s 64 largest cities (population of 250,000 or more).
Cities were evaluated on the following criteria: education level;
periodicals published; newspaper circulation; library support, holdings
and utilization; and booksellers. Florida’s 4th graders ranked 8th in the nation.
The 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also
known as “the Nation’s Report Card”, also indicate
that Florida’s writing scores increased significantly more
than the rest of the nation. Valencia Community College is 2nd in the nation in
total number of associate’s degrees awarded. It also ranks
5th in associate’s degrees awarded to minorities overall.
The survey focused on degrees conferred during the 2001-2002 academic
year. Fort Myers (#3) and West Palm Beach (#4) achieve top
ranking status in the 2003 Milken Institute Best Performing Cities
index. The index measures where jobs are being created, economies
are growing and businesses are thriving. Overall, 16 Florida metro
areas ranked within the top 200. Jacksonville is home to two of the top public high
schools in the nation: Stanton College Prep (#2) and Paxon (#3).
The schools are ranked on a ratio called the Challenge Index: number
of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests taken
by all students at a school in 2002 divided by the number of graduating
seniors. A total of 50 Florida high schools made the list. Florida’s economy grew the fastest among the
ten largest states. Based on 2001 data, the most current data available,
Florida’s annual growth of real gross state product (GSP)
was 1.8%. Trailing behind Florida is Texas, New York, Pennsylvania
and California. Florida is the 9th top job-creating state. The 8th
annual jobs survey compiled the top three manufacturing and non-manufacturing
job-creating projects from all state-level economic development
organizations. The South-Atlantic region, which includes Florida,
Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virgina, reported the
largest number of jobs to be created. Palm Beach ranked best place to live. After months
of research, The Robb Report, has named the town of Palm Beach as
the best place to live in the country. Some of the town's attributes
are culture, shopping, dining and golf. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University is ranked #1
for its undergraduate engineering program in Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical.
The rankings are based on the judgments of deans and senior faculty
who rated each program they're familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal)
to 5 (distinguished). Florida is the only state in the nation to have positive
job market growth for the past 13 months. For the year ending in
March 2003, the latest month for which comparable data from other
states is available, Florida continued to create the most new jobs
among all states and expanded at the fastest growth rate as compared
to the 10 most populous states. Florida International University takes top ranking
as the college awarding the most Bachelor's Degrees to Hispanics
in the nation. Florida's State Tax System ranked 7th on how friendly
it is to businesses. In a new study, The State Business Tax Climate
Index, the Tax Foundation ranks the 50 states on how "business
friendly" their tax systems were at the start of 2003. The
overall index is a composition of five specific indexes devoted
to major features of a state’s tax system, features that definitely
influence business decisions or the economy in general: the corporate
income tax, the individual income tax, the sales or gross receipts
tax, the state’s fiscal balance, and the conformity of the
state’s tax system with other systems. Click here to find out what homes are listed for sale in the Sarasota area © 1999-2024 NorthPortFloridaUSA.com All Rights Reserved.
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