West’s (Other) Cities Lead the Boom

By David Frey, 3-25-09

The West may be best known for its wide-open spaces, but increasingly it’s becoming an urban landscape. Many of the nation’s fastest-growing cities were in the West last year – and they’re not the places you’d think.

Sure, desert megalopolises like Phoenix and Las Vegas still claimed their share of newcomers. But growing even faster were places like Idaho Falls and Provo, Utah – small and midsized cities that out-of-staters would struggle to find on a map.

Utah and Idaho claimed four of the 10 fastest-growing metro areas in 2008, according to estimates released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. A quarter of the top 100 metro areas were in the intermountain West. Nineteen of the 100 fastest-growing counties were in the West, too. So were five of the nation’s largest cities.

Welcome to the new urban West.

“You’re looking at a snapshot in time,” says Gary Severson, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. It was a time before the brunt of the economic downturn hit and Western towns were still booming, driven in many cases by real estate, construction, energy production and mining – all sectors that have taken major hits in the recession. In some cases, those booms have already turned to busts.

In the years since the 2000 census, four of the five fastest-growing metro areas in the country were in New West territory: St. George, Utah; Provo-Orem, Utah; Greeley, Colo.; and Bend, Ore.

Leading the nation’s booming metro areas last year were Provo-Orem, at No. 6; Idaho Falls, at No. 8; and Logan, Utah, a metro area spanning into Idaho, at No. 9. St. George, a poster child for the West’s baby-boomer real estate boom, was at 10, tied with Grand Junction, Colo., a town that was bursting with roughnecks and retirees.

“What they all have is some combination of attractive qualities and practicality that work for people,” says Ben Alexander, associate director of Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based nonprofit research group. These midsized communities are usually more affordable than big cities but less isolated than small towns. They have more natural amenities than urban areas but more cultural amenities than rural ones.

His organization divides the region into the “three Wests.” One is urban. One is remote. A third is rural, but connected to the world by handy airport access and other amenities. That West has been seeing much of the growth, Alexander says.

Western states have remained the fastest-growing states in the country. Since 2000, the top five have been Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Georgia and Idaho. Last year, Utah grew fastest, with Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada all claiming spots in the top 10.

In some cases, Old West industry was driving the boom. Gas workers filled not just Grand Junction, but Casper, Wyo., which came in at 56. Safford, Ariz., in the southeast fringe of the state, was dubbed the fastest-growing “micropolitan” area in the country, with a galloping 4.1 percent growth rate. That growth was driven by a new copper mine, but the mine has since announced some 2,000 layoffs as commodity prices tumbled – a harsh example of the bust some of these towns are experiencing.

“The picture is no longer near as rosy as it was,” says Rich Gaar, executive director of the Southeast Arizona Governments Organization. Last year, he says, hotel rooms were hard to come by in Safford or neighboring Thatcher. “They built two or three new ones. Now they’re going begging. The vacancy rate is horrendous. The construction boom is over.”

But many of these cities are growing due in part to amenity chasers looking for an escape from urban commutes or harsh weather. Billings and Missoula claimed the spots at 70 and 80. Fort Collins, Colo., ranked 42, and Colorado Springs came in at 77. Arizona had Yuma, Prescott and Tucson, in addition to Phoenix. Reno, Nev., accompanied Las Vegas. New Mexico contributed Las Cruces and Albuquerque. Idaho also had Coeur d’Alene and Boise City.

“Much of our growth, going back to the ’90s, has been growth fueling growth,” says Alan Porter, who tracks census data for Idaho’s Department of Labor. Idaho’s mid-sized cities, with their mix of scenic beauty, climate, jobs and urban amenities, have become the state’s hot spots, he says. “That’s the story of Idaho, and a lot of Western states.”

Western cities synonymous with boom times still accounted for much of the growth, especially in terms of the sheer number of newcomers. The king was Phoenix, ranking 17 among the fastest-growing metro areas. It was one of just four cities to grow by 100,000 people last year. Since 2000, more than 1 million moved to the metro area – the equivalent of the entire state of Montana becoming snowbirds. Maricopa County ranked as the fourth-largest in the country, behind Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston’s home counties. Neighboring Pinal County was the second-fastest-growing county in the nation.

“We are definitely still growing and people are definitely still coming,” says Arizona state demographer Bill Schooling.

Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas, ranked 15 among the largest counties. Its metro area ranked 43 among the fastest growing. It remains to be seen how this year’s numbers will compare, though, as jobs move out of the West’s growth hot spots and would-be newcomers lack the cash to buy that dream house.

“Nationally, people don’t feel quite the flexibility that they have in the past,” Schooling says. “Maybe they can’t sell their house where they live, so they’re staying put a little bit more. But I think people who have the flexibility to move, those are the people who are still coming here.”