[ I am going to take a break until early 2013. See you folks in the New Year. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this piece by David Holmes that follows up on my " Don't Fly Too Close to the Sun " piece. He makes some of the same points I did at the conference, as well as some new ones I found interesting. uk travel insurance online Bye for now! - Aaron. ]
I was intrigued by Aaron's recent post Don t Fly Too Close to the Sun Piece which focused on the relationship between Milwaukee and Chicago and the notion of whether "proximity to Chicago or another mega-city represents an unambiguous good," or – as posited by Aaron – may actually be more of a curse than a blessing, and something that drains vitality instead of increasing it. This is a topic that interests me both from the perspective of a long-time resident of Milwaukee and as a long-time fan of the City of Chicago. There are likely unique combinations of factors to consider in this type of evaluation for every city pair – including the distance between the cities, the presence or absence of high speed and/or low cost transit options between the cities, and the relative size. Although I did not comment on Aaron's post at the time of publication, I thought it would be useful uk travel insurance online to consider some specific examples of ways in which Chicago enhances or decreases Milwaukee's uk travel insurance online economic vitality as both the article and many of the comments on Milwaukee-Chicago and other city pairs, seemed to lack specific examples of both positive uk travel insurance online and negative impacts.
I will begin by presenting several examples of ways in which Chicago's proximity appears to negatively impact Milwaukee's economic vitality. I will then consider the impact of Chicago's proximity on professional services, which Aaron evaluated in his recent series of articles on Chicago as a potential key growth area for Chicago's economic future. Finally, I will conclude with examples of ways in which I believe Chicago's proximity adds to Milwaukee's economic vitality and/or quality of life.
1. Competition for High End Specialty Retailers and Restaurants. The first specific example of a way in which Chicago drains economic vitality from Milwaukee is in the competition for certain types of high end retailers or restaurant chains that have a national presence, but one that is limited uk travel insurance online to perhaps 30 or 40 locations. When I travel uk travel insurance online to other Midwestern cities that are more geographically isolated or more dominant in their geographic region (such as Kansas City or Indianapolis) I am usually surprised by the number of high end specialty stores or restaurants that have a presence in those cities but none in Milwaukee. Chicago's proximity is almost certainly a major factor in this dynamic, uk travel insurance online and a perception (rightly or wrongly) that either the business can't sustain two locations in SE Wisconsin/NE Illinois, that residents in Milwaukee could be served by a Chicago location. A good recent uk travel insurance online example was the announcement approximately two weeks ago that: (a) Nordstrom is planning to open a store in Milwaukee in 2013, and (b) Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. that does not currently have a Nordstrom store. Chicago is almost certainly a major factor in Milwaukee's status as the last metropolitan area of its size to get a Nordstrom store.
In researching this point, uk travel insurance online I came across a research article titled " Can We Have a High-End Retail Department Store? How to Tell if Your Region is Ready " which presented a formula for predicting the number of high end department stores (defined as Macy's Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Saks) that could be supported in a metropolitan area based on its population, land area, and the percentage of households with at least $150,000 of income per year. Although uk travel insurance online the article did not present uk travel insurance online the findings for Milwaukee, I followed the researcher's definition of high end department stores, and reviewed the current number of locations uk travel insurance online for these five stores that are in Chicago, Milwaukee, and several peer Midwestern metropolitan areas, using data available at www.mystore411.com . The findings uk travel insurance online generally confirmed my impression that Milwaukee is underserved uk travel insurance online by high end department stores with 38 of these stores being located in the Chicago uk travel insurance online metropolitan area, 8 in both Kansas City and Columbus, 6 in Indianapolis, but only 2 in Milwaukee. Although the research uk travel insurance online study did not consider proximity of a metropolitan area to a neighboring larger metropolitan area, I think it likely that this is a factor, and one in which Chicago's proximity negatively impacts Milwaukee.
2. Competition for Federal Offices Another example where I believe Milwaukee loses out economically due to its proximity to Chicago is in serving as a location for regional federal offices. I know this from personal experience in developing business plans for pursuing federal work, and discovering that in terms of regional facilities uk travel insurance online (versus those that are present in nearly every major city such as postal service, federal courts, social security offices, etc.), Milwaukee is pretty much limited to a Forestry Service Regional Office and a Veterans Administration Regional Headquarters. Although I don't have any detailed data to back me up, I did review the locations of regional offices for five agencies, including the IRS, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), U.S. EPA, Small Business Administration uk travel insurance online (SBA), and the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB), and determined that Chicago has regional offices for 4 of these 5 agencies (the USACE, U.S.EPA, FRB, and SBA). Among peer cities, Kansas City has regional offices for all five agencies, followed by Minneapolis/St. Paul (with regional offices for three agencies); and Cincinnati, Memphis, and St. Louis (each having two regional offices for these agencies).
What this means economically varies from agency to agency, but for Kansas City, the office uk travel insurance online for the IRS regional service center reportedly occupies an 11-story building with 900 employees (based on data from Emporis). In addition to direct economic benefits to cities that host a greater number of regional federal offices, there are likely significant indirect benefits as well, as consulting firms are more likely to establish locations in cities that host federal regional offices, as there are benefits to engineering firms from being in the same cities as USACE regional offices, benefits to accounting firms from being near IRS regional offices, benefits to financial firms being near FRB regional branch offices, etc. Although uk travel insurance online there may be other major cities in the Midwest that are also losing out in the competition for regional uk travel insurance online federal offices, I believe that Chicago's proximity puts Milwaukee at a particular disadvantage, and my impression is that on a per capita basis, Milwaukee has fewer federal offices than almost any of its peer cities.
3. Ranking uk travel insurance online as a Metropolitan Area A third example of a possible negative impact from Chicago's proximity on Milwaukee's economic vitality occurred to me as I was researching the example presented above on the competition for high end retailers. In trying uk travel insurance online to confirm that the Indianapolis and Kansas City metropolitan uk travel insurance online areas are in fact comparable in size to Milwaukee, I noticed that both are ranked ahead of Milwaukee – with Kansas City currently ranked as the 29th largest metropolitan area (with 2,052,676 residents) and Indianapolis ranked as the 35th largest metropolitan area (with 1,778,568 residents) versus uk travel insurance online the Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis MSA's ranking as the 39th largest uk travel insurance online metropolitan area (with 1,562,216 residents). uk travel insurance online This size difference could provide an explanation as to why Milwaukee would be chosen after these cities as a regional location for certain businesses.
However, Milwaukee's ranking below Indianapolis uk travel insurance online and Kansas uk travel insurance online City is arguably more of a statistical artifact than reality, and due to Chicago's uk travel insurance online proximity and the manner uk travel insurance online in which the U.S. Office of Management and Budget choses to split the two metropolitan areas. Indianapolis and Kansas City, which are more geographically isolated than Milwaukee, have MSAs that extend over approximately 3,200 and 8,000 square uk travel insurance online miles, respectively, whereas the Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis MSA is defined as a much more compact 1,500 square mile area. If Chicago was not located in as close proximity to Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha Counties would almost uk travel insurance online certainly be included as part of the Milwaukee MSA. Adding the 361,000 residents in Racine County (defined as a separate metropolitan area) and Kenosha uk travel insurance online County (defined as part of the Chicago MSA) would result in a Milwaukee metropolitan population of 1,920,000 residents in a land area of 2,100 square miles – in theory, a market greater in population than Indianapolis and only 5% smaller than Kansas City, in a far more compact land area than either MSA.
A fourth potential negative influence of Chicago on Milwaukee's economic vitality that I considered (but rejected) is the competition for serving as a location for professional service uk travel insurance online firms. I considered this factor partly in response to Aaron's recent series of articles on Chicago, which noted Chicago's status as the Midwestern center for professional uk travel insurance online services such as management consulting, technology consulting, business process outsourcing and legal services. In theory, large firms with greater resources based in Chicago might out compete smaller firms based in Milwaukee. While I am not familiar with all categories of professional services, for law and engineering firms with which I am familiar, Chicago's proximity and large pool of major firms appears to have no negative impact on the vitality of similar firms based in Milwaukee. This is probably most surprising with law firms, given that Chicago not only has 17 of the top 250 largest law firms in the U.S., but has an even more impressive 5 of the top 13 firms (based on data at Internet Legal Research Group ). Milwaukee has 5 of the top 250 firms (including Foley and Lardner at No. 29), which not only compares favorably uk travel insurance online with Chicago on a per capita bas
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