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Old 06-24-2015, 08:16 PM
 
124 posts, read 146,088 times
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I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be one like this.

When I see a metro population I just don't know what that means. What can you get there? I only know Syracuse, a town of 20K and 33K and New York City lol.

I've heard that 20,000 people is needed for a Walmart Supercenter in the middle of nowhere (but there's 100,000 Americans per domestic Walmart). How much is needed for a decent electronics store like a Best Buy? A decent home store like Home Depot, not a mere hardware store? A decent mall? AAA baseball? A decent bus system? Commuter or urban trains? Anecdotal or scientific comments welcome on any good, service or business you could think of.

Last edited by Dec012014; 06-24-2015 at 08:40 PM..
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Old 06-24-2015, 10:54 PM
 
Location: Somewhere extremely awesome
3,130 posts, read 3,055,985 times
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It looks like the threshold for Best Buy is around 100-150 thousand people in a 30 mile radius unless in a very remote area. Looking at my home state of Michigan, there are Best Buy stores in small to mid-size metropolitan or micropolitan areas like Port Huron, Jackson, Midland, Bay City, and Traverse City. There is also one in Marquette, but the Upper Peninsula is kind of isolated.

The population threshold for Home Depot seems to be a bit lower, with some stores in places I wouldn't expect. A relatively isolated city of 20,000 or so appears to have a good chance of having one.
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Old 06-25-2015, 07:00 AM
 
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It's too wide a spectrum to develop a simple number game for. For instance in category such as coffee, consider Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. You can have a place with a population of 75k that might have two DD and no Starbucks. It's about demographics (particularly buying power/disposable income and educational attainment), cost to do business and other factors as well. Check out ESRI, which is a site/service most American companies utilize to help determine viability of locations. Esri Data | Current Year Demographic & Business Data | Estimates & Projections
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