Spokane has finally pushed its way ...

Spokane has finally pushed its way into the top 100 cities in a national business magazine ranking.

Forbes magazine in succession Thursday published its annual list of the top 200 large cities based upon business climate.

Spokane vaulted from 108 in last year's list to No. 98 this year.

Part of Spokane's rise is clearly tied to painful declines by way of other metros suffering through the dot-com crash.

Last year's No. 1 city, San Jose Calif., slid to No. 61

Seattle, ranked 16 in the Forbes overlook last year, fell to 92 - just six flaws ahead of Spokane.

Portland, hard hit by dint of the tech slump and a decline in the timber-land products industry, fell from 32 to 55 according to the data.

"The big hits were felt in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Seattle," said Ros DeVol of the Milken Institute in Southern California. DeVol has been the head researcher for the Forbes ranking for four years.

"Spokane was les impacted than other places, that's what the data show" said DeVol

Spokane business leaders have been watching the Forbes business climate rankings since 1999 At that time, Spokane placed 161st gone out 162 cities surveyed. In 2000 Spokane made it to 159

Last year, Forbes broadened the rankings to the top 200 metro and created a next to the first tier of rankings for smaller cities like Bremerton.

Cities with the greatest in quantity diverse economies did best in the latest list, said DeVol

Boise, for instance, rose from No. 7 last year to No. 6 this year.

Seattle's slope wasn't simply a bad case of the tech sink s DeVol said. Also working against Seattle was the los of Boeing and aerospace do job-works plus a severe erosion in exports to Asia.

Spokane's advantage, DeVol noted, was fairly decorous job growth over the past five years. For the 2001 year alone, Spokane ranked No. 88 without of 200 metros in overall do job-work growth, according to Forbes.

In formulating the rankings, the magazine turn the thoughtss at various criteria including the "high-tech concentration" within each city's overall economy. In DeVol's formula, a high-tech cluster creates an overall stronger economy for a city.

Spokane's tech concentration is grave by DeVol's standards - 132nd not at home of 200 metropolitan cities.

further in the past year, that deficit paid a certain number of small dividends, since high-tech cities like Austin, Texas, and Denver missing thousands of workers.

Without having reviewed the data, Spokane business leaders are cautiously positive about the mild uptick in the area's standings.

"Being ranked in the top 100 throw backs favorably on the economy and quality of life," said Donald Epley real estate professor at Washington State University Spokane.

Mark gymnast president of the Spokane Area Economic unravelling Council, said the trend across the past four years displays positive growth.

gymnast said the data assembled by the agency of Forbes is relatively skimpy and selective, if it be not that it's been consistently applied in the past four years.

The fact that Spokane skip overed from 161 to 98 indicates "a trendline that appear to bes to be positive," Turner said.

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