BusinessWeek Name Springdale Best for Kids

BusinessWeek has tabbed Springdale as the best place to raise children in 2009.

For its annual list, BusinessWeek said it selected towns with at least 50,000 residents and a median family income between $40,000 and $100,000. (The median income listed for Springdale is $53,385.)

The magazine narrowed the selection by weighting criteria for school performance, number of schools, household expenditures, crime rates, air quality, job growth, family income, museums, parks, theaters, other amenities and diversity.

Landing the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, a Double-A minor league affiliate of the Kansas City Royals for the 2008 season was apparently a big factor, according to the magazine.

“Springdale in northwest Arkansas has its own minor league baseball stadium, parks, a major rodeo event and nearby hunting and fishing,” BusinessWeek said.

The honor certainly can’t hurt Springdale’s image, which it has long struggled to craft as something beyond and poultry industry and poor traffic.

It is also a “win” for a city not named “Fayetteville” in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area. Neighboring cities have often grumbled whenever Fayetteville earned a high ranking on one of these sort of lists, occasionally noting that the entire MSA was honored, not just a single city.

Clearly, BusinessWeek knows the difference. It named Fayetteville as one of its runners-up in Arkansas along with Conway.