Huntsville No. 1 – on the continent – for tech growth potential

HUNTSVILLE — The Rocket City can add another No. 1 ranking to its collection.

This time, Huntsville takes the nod as the top city among the 25 smaller markets in North America — referred to as “North America’s Next 25” – with the strongest growth potential for technology companies, according to CBRE, a global real estate brokerage.

These 25 smaller markets have strong growth potential and are concentrated in the U.S. Midwest and South. They have been separately ranked from the top 50 markets according to their relative strength, CBRE said.

“Huntsville, Alabama’s biggest city that is situated between the Tennessee River and the Appalachian Mountains, was the birthplace of the rocket propulsion technology that powered America’s first satellite and eventually took the first people to the moon in the 1960s,” said a story in costar.com. “That tradition of innovation and technology continues in Huntsville, where tech jobs have increased 14% to nearly 24,000 positions over the past five years, according to CBRE.

“The Huntsville area is known mostly for its Redstone Arsenal military base where military missiles are developed, and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, which develops rockets for spaceflight. Supportive industries and contractors have set up shop around these government activities while NASA’s push to rely more on partnerships with private companies has also attracted more tech jobs,” the article said. “Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space startup, Blue Origin, opened a Huntsville plant in 2020 to build rocket engines.

“The city’s growth is also bolstered by a new $2.3 billion manufacturing plant for Toyota and Mazda that opened in 2021, adding about 4,000 jobs to the area.”