Best Place to Do Business: Lynchburg 49, Roanoke 81

Downtown Lynchburg from Madison Heights.

Forbes 's 2011 Best Places for Businesses and Careers places the Lynchburg MSA at No. 49 and Roanoke No. 81, trailing Northern Virginia (27) and ahead--far ahead--of Virginia Beach (126). The rankings measure a region’s cost of doing business, annual job growth and education ranking.

“We were the smallest metro in terms of population to land in the top 50 outside of Washington State and that speaks volumes,” says Bryan David, Executive Director of Virginia’s Region 2000 Economic Development Council. “This ranking shows once again how competitive our region’s economy stacks up nationally.”

In the past several years, the Lynchburg metro has demonstrated its competitiveness with high rankings in this Forbes list and others such as the Milken Institute’s Best Performing Cities Index. Last year, the metro led the state in 28th place in the nation in the Forbes list and moved up 11 positions from the previous year in the Milken Institute’s list that looks at how well a region creates and sustains jobs.