Community Corner

Ballwin Named Missouri's Fastest-Growing City

Despite U.S. Census data suggesting otherwise, Bloomberg Businessweek said the city in St. Louis County is the area's fastest-growing.

Ballwin is the fastest-growing city in Missouri, according to a report published this week.

The report, which was featured in an article published by Bloomberg Businessweek, analyzed various factors to determine which cities were outpacing the other municipalities in their respective states.

In addition to calculating raw population changes, the study also looked at factors such as the length of residents’ stays and income level changes.

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“The community growth was a very small margin, so to say it was the fastest-growing in the area … that’s surprising,” Ballwin Mayor Tim Pogue said shortly after hearing the results.

Keith Osborn is the sales director for the Gadberry Group, the data-collection company based in Arkansas that conducted the study. He said observers should know the study used different geographical boundaries than the 2010 U.S. Census, which said Ballwin in the last decade, reducing the city’s population to 30,404.

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“There were some areas outside the city that we considered that did have some growth,” Osborn said. “It’s not just the boundary that they’re looking it. We looked at the larger area, and so the overall area had growth.”

Alderman Mark Harder, who is a realtor with Prudential Alliance, said he was wary of the study’s findings. Particularly because Ballwin shares its zip codes with neighboring municipalities, tying surrounding areas’ growth with the city’s may not provide an accurate picture, Harder said.

“So the Devil’s always in the details on these things, and they’re not always comparing apples to apples.”


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