Local radio talk show host Tony Russell has lately put out the call for “What’s so great about Broome County?” His motivation is to get a list of unique benefits of living and working in our region so his wife, who is a copywriter, can devise radio commercials that local stations will play as public service announcements, and also will be made available to the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations who might want to send them out to other areas in an attempt to better market our region. I applaud his efforts.

It also got me to thinking that perhaps I should write a few posts about the benefits of living and working in Greater Binghamton (or Broome County), NY. This is the first of those posts.

A big reason people may want to locate in our lovely area is geography–or more precisely, our proximity to other areas. There are two major food distribution companies in our region: Willow Run Foods and Maines Paper & Food Service. They both have contracts with restaurant chains throughout the northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. Penguin Publishing has a huge printing and warehouse facility here. And the United States Postal Service has a Hub and Spoke Program (HASP) located here–one of only 10 in the entire country–where mountains of mail come in, get sorted, and shipped back out each night. Why? Location.

Greater Binghamton is located at the intersection of three major highways: Interstates 81 & 88, and NY State Route 17 (soon to be renamed Interstate 86). If you take a compass and put its point on Binghamton and draw a circle around Binghamton that reaches 100 miles, you’ll see Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Scraton-Willkes Barre. If you go out to 200 miles, you’ll include New York City, Philadelphia and Buffalo. And at 300 miles you get Boston, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Ottawa and Montreal. So within a five hour drive, you will hit better than half of the population of the East Coast.

Another staggering number…if you go out to 750 miles from Binghamton, you’ll get fully one-half of the United States and Canada’s: population, personal income, skilled workers, and business establishments. If “location” is the key to great real estate, Binghamton is in the cat-bird seat. Major highways, a very good regional airport (and close proximity to other airports), and half the country’s markets where you can sell your goods and services. Greater Binghamton has it all.

Come on in, the water’s warm!

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