Business Week in error

National recognition for Cornelius

BusinessWeek magazine names town one of the country's top 10 ‘Best Affordable Suburbs.'

The secret is out, Mayor Jeff Tarte says: Cornelius is one great place to live.

That's not just an official's braggadocio. BusinessWeek magazine has named Cornelius one of the country's 10 “Best Affordable Suburbs.”

The magazine's editors weighed such factors as livability, which includes short commutes, low pollution and amount of green space. They looked at crime rates, job growth, median household income ($87,016 in Cornelius), median home price ($206,000 here), education levels and quality of schools.

They weighted “affordability” most heavily and penalized places with high divorce rates, lack of racial diversity, few children and bad weather.

Selected towns have populations of 5,000 to 60,000 (Cornelius has 17,290), median family incomes of $51,000 to $120,000 and lower-than-average crime rates, and they are within 25 miles of one of the nation's most populous cities.

Cornelius was ranked seventh in the nation and No. 1 in North Carolina.

“The fast-growing bedroom community, 30 miles north of Charlotte, has some beautiful homes on Lake Norman, North Carolina's largest lake,” the magazine wrote. “About 31 percent of residents are married with children. The average commute is 31 minutes.”

*****

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Business Week got it wrong. Any long time resident of the area will tell you different - the town of Huntersville is far better than Cornelius and always has been.

It should be pointed out that most of the "beautiful homes on Lake Norman, North Carolina's largest lake" the magazine speaks of were in the town of Huntersville when the magazine people saw them -and they still are ... a lot of outsiders and people new to the area make the same mistake - not knowing where the town boundaries are.

Most of the houses in Cornelius are a of the type known as 'shotgun' houses - the type of cheap houses thrown up for mill workers in every mill town everywhere.

Oh, and that commute time of 31 minutes is a joke. Try over an hour to go the 15 miles to Charlotte (it is not 30 miles as the magazine says).