Fort Smith remained at the top among Arkansas cities on the Arkansas Tech Business Index in the first quarter of 2015, the university said Tuesday.
The city’s high rating was bolstered by its issuance of a permit for the planned 8,000-square-foot Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, Tech associate professor of economics and index developer Marc Fusaro said in a statement. The city finished the first quarter with a rating of 108.05, the best among the 18 municipalities tracked. The index offers a snapshot of economic activity around the state, taking into account a labor index, housing market index, construction index and retail sales index; a rating above 100 indicates that a city is economically performing better than the state average from 2009 to the present.
“This pushed [Fort Smith’s] commercial permit component index up to 134.22, which in turn pulled the construction permit sector index up to 114.88,” Fusaro said. “In addition, the strong retail sales pushed the oft-strong Fort Smith retail sales sector index up to 123.49. With all of this activity, Fort Smith had an exceptionally strong March reading of 111.84 to lead the index again.”
The other cities with a Tech index rating over 100 in the first quarter were: Bentonville, at 104.87; Springdale, 104.17; Fayetteville, 104.10; Rogers, 103.42; Conway, 102.47; Hot Springs, 101.40; Van Buren, 100.08; and Mountain Home, 100.07. Below 100 were Jonesboro, 99.67; Russellville, 99.46; Searcy, 98.75; Texarkana, 96.77; North Little Rock, 96.58; West Memphis, 96.24; El Dorado, 96.21; Little Rock, 96.02; and Pine Bluff, 94.39.
The Arkansas Tech Business Index is maintained Arkansas Tech University College of Business and is sponsored by Arvest Bank.