Columbia, Missouri
Fast fact: Home of University of Missouri.
Pros: Aura of college town, reasonable cost of living, median home price $167,000, high doctors per capita.
Con: Weather extremes.
Regional Economic Development, Inc. Quarterly Breakfast on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 at 7:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Executive Center featuring MU Chancellor Brady Deaton presenting “Global Mizzou”.
Thank you to the over 500 people that watched live or online to the #BOOM event in Columbia, MO – a powerful epicenter to a rapidly emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem, one designed to inspire, nurture, and develop entrepreneurs that will flourish and succeed in the new economy.
(Hashtag BOOM) – #BOOM event was hosted on www.comoboom.com by Caledon Virtual. Videos of the event are available at www.comoboom.com/video
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Veterans United Home Loans, based in Columbia, Mo., was recognized as the No. 29 job creator in the United States yesterday in Inc. magazine’s inaugural Hire Power Awards. The awards honor America’s 100 top private job creators over the past three years. Veterans United generated 564 jobs from 2008 to 2011.
Columbia is constantly growing with a strong economy based on the education, healthcare and insurance industries. Columbia works to attract new businesses to our area and diversify its economy in order to assure a prosperous future for our community.
Columbia offers small-town friendliness with big city features and a high quality of life for people of all ages and interests. Columbia is a great place to live due to a low cost of living, an excellent education system, outstanding health care facilities, abundant entertainment opportunities, beautiful parks and trails, a clean environment and much more.
MU’s strategic contribution to the vitality and growth of the statewide and more specifically the regional economy of Central Missouri is reflected in its role as a provider of jobs, contributor to increased tax revenues, and a means of enhancing value-added economic and social capital.
Teamwork is key at the Bond Life Sciences Center where internationally-recognized interdisciplinary research teams are working 24/7 solving problems in human and animal health, the environment and agriculture.
Located near the largest university-based research reactor in the country, the life science business incubator provides an environment conducive to company growth and a place for researchers to further develop their research into profitable companies.
REDI and the League of Innovators launched a downtown incubator on September 6, 2012. The space, next door to REDI’s headquarters, will serve as an affordable, 24-hour office space for entrepreneurship in Columbia, providing resources and space for local entrepreneurs.
Area Development ranked 365 MSAs across 23 economic and workforce growth indicators. In the results we see that even amid the recessionary gloom, there were blooms of prosperity, and there are some places that have gotten back on their feet faster than others.
Featured Investor
Shafer, Kline & Warren, Inc.
By design, SKW is equal parts service and expertise. This balance comes from over 60 years of experience and a staff of over 250 employees throughout nine offices in the Midwest. The service we offer our clients helps form the foundation of the many partnerships we enjoy today. Together with our many years of industry experience, it enables us to deliver lasting results. The truest measure of this commitment can be seen by observing the impact our work has had on the communities we help develop. Our capabilities include civil engineering services for public works and land development, energy services, pipeline integrity, pipeline survey, instrumentation and controls, structural engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, land planning, land surveying, landscape architecture, construction observation and geographic information systems (GIS). Each of these complimentary disciplines is provided by a qualified project team, which has helped establish SKW’s long-standing tradition of excellence.
In 2005, the University of Missouri Board of Curators approved the development of a section of Columbia’s South Farm for a new research park. The belief was, and continues to be, that the research occurring in the living fields and laboratories at South Farm, and at the University of Missouri, will attract tenants who desire close proximity to innovative intellectual resources. It is the mission of the University of Missouri System Office of Research and Economic Development to link research and commercialization from the system’s four campuses with emerging and existing firms across the state—Discovery Ridge does just that.
Best-Performing Cities 2012 “Where Jobs are Created and Sustained” The Best-Performing Cities index was designed to measure which U.S. metropolitan areas are promoting economic vitality based on job creation and retention, the quality of new jobs, and other criteria. The index pinpoints where employment is stable and expanding, wages and salaries are increasing, and economies and businesses are thriving. [...]