Community Profiles offer snapshot of area growth

For this issue, we’ve revived a feature that hasn’t been done since 2001 – Community Profiles that provide information about the growing towns and cities in the Ozarks.

The editorial staff sent out more than 20 requests for information to area municipalities. While we didn’t have a great rate of return, the profiles of those cities that did participate offer clues to where southwest Missouri is growing.

The questions we asked covered the sorts of information that we think might be handy to someone who was considering moving their residence or a business to a city in the Ozarks. But even for the rest of us, the profiles include interesting facts and figures that illustrate the region’s growth.

Consider Nixa. In 1980 – the same year that Springfield Business Journal was born – the population of Nixa was a mere 2,600 people. Fast-forward to 2005, and that number has jumped to 16,500.

And it’s not just more people who are now in Nixa. Look at its landscape. I remember as a kid visiting family who lived near Nixa. We’d drive through “town,” only there wasn’t much there besides the Nixa sale barn and a few other small businesses. I don’t even remember a Wal-Mart in Nixa, although that’s hard to fathom now.

These days there are all sorts of businesses, restaurants and subdivisions in Nixa, a city that would most likely be unrecognizable to me had I not been in nearby Springfield to observe all the changes.

There’s also Rogersville, the city that’s part of both Webster and Greene counties. Population there has more than doubled in the last 25 years. I’m no stranger to Rogersville; in fact I drive through there often on my way to visit Seymour – a small Webster County town that finally, in the last few years, got its own McDonald’s restaurant, complete with a post in the parking lot where the area’s Amish can tie their horses.

It seems that the explosive growth in Nixa, Ozark and Christian County – the fastest growing county in Missouri – overshadows progress in other cities. But I’m keeping my eye on Rogersville and other cities east of Springfield. I think there’s going to be a lot to see. Who’d have thought there’d ever be a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Marshfield, for example. I’d almost bet money that before this decade’s over, there’ll be others out in that direction.

Growth is a good thing. It means progress: jobs, opportunities, revenues. It also means that resources are necessary for bigger schools, more roads, infrastructure and the other necessities that come with having more people, more commerce and more traffic.

Throughout the year, SBJ’s pages are filled with news about the area’s growth, be it a new building under construction, ballot issues for funds to pay for infrastructure or the creation of new jobs in the Ozarks.

I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling that the growth we’re experiencing isn’t going to wane anytime soon. As a matter of fact, I’m counting on it.

Maria Hoover is SBJ Inside Business Editor.