Houston Tops Forbes Ranking for Young Professionals Relocation

From Forbes.com via the Houston Business Journal:

Houston topped this year’s Forbes list of best cities where a recent college graduate can get a strong start on a high-powered career. The magazine placed the Bayou City at No. 1 for its “business-friendly environment and abundance of oil money,” considering it is home to 14 of the country’s largest companies. Only New York City, fourth on the list, had more big employers, according to Forbes.

Houston also had high average incomes and a concentration of graduates from elite colleges — and not just from local Rice University — but from across the country. Texas fared very well in the studdy, both Austin and Dallas also securing a spot in the Top 10 — Dallas at No. 6 and Austin rounding out the list at No. 10.

To come up with the list, Forbes looked at all of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the U.S., and then eliminated cities with fewer than 1 million people, and cities where Moody’s Economy.com predicts job growth will be negative over the next year. Next, each city was ranked based on its current unemployment rate, then criteria was factored in such as what people earn, the ability to stretch a dollar in the city and how many public companies called that city home. Then Forbes counted how many members of the Class of 2000 at Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Duke University, Rice University and Northwestern University were currently living in each city.

Cities rounding out the list included Washington D.C. at No. 2 followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston, Seattle, Denver and Atlanta.

Houstonians Spend Far Less on Designer Coffee

From notes and quotes in the Houston Business Journal and the Denver Business Journal:

It seems that Houstonians are fooled by all the hype surrounding designer coffee beverages from Starbucks and other national coffee retailers. Mint.com, an online personal finance website, has posted it's lists of cities that spend the most and the least on designer coffee. Houston made the Top 10 list for Least Amount spent yearly on coffee, coming in at an average of $310/year per person in 2009 and around $27/month thus far in 2010. San Antonio made the spend the most list at an expenditure of $377/year per average person.

"Now, this will come as no great surprise, but Seattle -- Starbucks world headquarters -- tops the list, at $674 spent per person per year. In Seattle in the wintertime, you drive to work in the dark and come home in the dark, so you need something to keep you from running off the road into Puget Sound. Also not surprisingly, Las Vegas comes in at No. 2, with $391 spent on java in a year. After a long night of dissipation, it's a safe bet you'll need a strong slug of coffee."

Rounding out the Top 10 in yearly expenditure(s) comes :Portland, Ore. ($388); San Antonio, Texas ($377); St. Louis ($376); San Jose, Calif. ($366); Tucson, Ariz. ($362; must be iced coffee); San Francisco ($358), tied with New York; Denver; and Phoenix ($352)."

Local Brewery Readying for Move to Downtown Houston

After 15 years in operation, St. Arnold Brewing Co. will bid farewell to its original brewery at its annual Oktoberfest celebration on Oct. 3.
The company — which won a gold medal for its St. Arnold Summer Pils at the recent Great American Beer Festival in Denver — is relocating from its current 30,000-square-foot space at 2522 Fairway Park Drive in North Houston into a redeveloped 90,000-square-foot former HISD warehouse located at 2000 Lyons Ave. near downtown.
Construction crews are completing a $6 million, year-long renovation of the historic building.
St. Arnold’s offices are expected to move in early October and brewing operations will follow in November.
The new brewhouse, which will feature beer-making equipment imported from a defunct brewery in a Bavarian monastery, will increase the Houston-based company’s brewing capacity by 60 percent to 40,000 barrels a year. The facility also offers the ability to grow production to 100,000 barrels per year.
Saint Arnold’s brewery attracts about 50,000 visitors a year, but with a new location close to downtown, St. Arnold’s founder Brock Wagner expects to attract twice as many in future.