Quote:
Originally Posted by WeST
I did a little quick and dirty investigation of the fortune 500 issue. On the surface this sounds very damning of Delts argument, but a closer look changes it. According to Fortune, Denver has 11 companies in the top 500. If my analysis is right only five of those are relocations from other states. Meaning the other 6 are homegrown out of Denver. From those 5 you get two that had their founding in Omaha, which would have given Colorado a advantage because of proximity. So Utah was only passed up 5X as often as Colorado or, depending how you view it, 3X as often. This is not to denigrate Colorado; home growing businesses is just as good, but this should not be used as evidence that companies are largely avoiding Utah. Lastly, I think only one company moved to Colorado in the 90's and none in this decade.
As for Idaho, the one Fortune 500 company they have, Micron, is also a homegrown enterprise. Utah wasn't passed up for Boise.
Utah needs to keep companies here as they grow and develop into large corporations. I think this is the real issue. Utah also appears to be gaining momentum, which will make it increasingly likely that a company like that would relocate or develop here.
|
Idaho and Boise, also has another Fortune 500 company called Boise Cascade Holdings which has their headquarters downtown Boise. As recently as 3 years ago we had three Fortune 500, the Albertsons Headquarters but now the main headquarters is in Eden Prarie, MN because of the buy out, but Boise still has the Western corporate headquarters for the "Albertsons" brand name just not the main headquarters for Super Valu.
Go back a decade ago and there were even more Fortune 500 companies, 3 more, with headquarters in Boise but buy outs and mergers have changed that.
At one time Boise had the most Fortune 500 headquarters per capita than any other city in the nation and the best thing is all of the historical Fortune 500 that were headquarted here and the current Fortune 500 headquartered in Boise are homegrown which really speaks of the entrepreneurial creative spirit of Boise. In current times though we are competing just like any other city for expansions and relocated headquarters and currently there are at least a dozen mid sized and large companies considering expanding, relocating or moving headquarters to Boise. I know of a few recent smaller expansions into Boise from California and Washington high tech companies that also considered Utah but then there are companies that looked at both Boise and Salt Lake and chose Salt Lake...It depends on who has the best tax package or wooing package. It just sucks that times change and homegrown companies get bought out by other corporations.
Microsoft is considering Boise for a major regional headquarters expansion and Micron is teaming up with Solar companies to turn Boise into the green/solar product assembly capitol of the West. That would be sweet.
Threaded Mode