Boca Raton is America’s Laziest City? Think Again.
Credit: bocaresort.com
By Casey Westfall and Stephanie Fonseca
Boca Raton is a town where one can live, work, and play. However, according to Realtor.com, it’s also the laziest city in the nation.
“With an average temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit and 231 sunny days out of the year, it’s all too easy to be a beach bum in Boca Raton,” writes Yuqing Pan, the author of the story on Realtor.com.
According to the site, these were the seven areas that they judged each city by:
- The amount of restaurants that have delivery services
- The amount of massage centers and day spas
- Average hours people sleep a night
- Average hours people work a week
- The average cost of cleaning services
- Number of available service applications
- Amount of homes listed on their website that have saunas/steam rooms/hot tubs
These categories, while providing the basis for an amusing article, do nothing but give an inaccurate labeling of our city.
If anything, scoring high in categories like available service applications and amount of massage centers only highlight the great leisure and luxury our city has to offer.
We might have been gotten the award for laziest city in America, but according to Livability.com, it’s also one of the best places to live. In their list of their top 100 best cities to live in, Boca placed 59th, ranking higher than Miami Beach, Berkley, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In addition, Florida Atlantic University was ranked 5th in the website Best College Review’s list of the top 50 colleges located near the ocean, given the large amount of undergraduate and graduate programs (over 180), and the close proximity of the Boca campus to the beach (less than a mile away).
When it’s all said and done, the things that make Boca Raton “the laziest city in the nation” are also the things that make it such a great place to live.
But at the same time, Boca Raton is far from being lazy. The city has a thriving business sector, with many successful businesses, including Office Depot and ADT Security, calling our city home.
Boca Raton is also a good place for start-up companies to thrive. In 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek named Boca Raton the second best city for startups in the nation, dubbing the city “Silicon Beach.”
Seeing this, Boca native Rachel Zietz, a lacrosse player who was disappointed in the quality and selection of lacrosse gear, decided to take matters into her own hands and start her own production line for lacrosse products. With the blow up of the sport in South Florida, the company thrived and she is now getting her shot at expansion, presenting her company, Gladiator Lacrosse to the TV show “Shark Tank.”
We’ve also proven ourselves to be a popular city amongst technology companies. Back in 2013, South Florida Business Journal’s list of the top 15 fastest-growing technology firms included nine that had their headquarters here in Boca Raton.
This success in technology isn’t recent, though. Back in 1981, IBM introduced their first personal computer, the IBM 5150, to the public. Upon its release, the 5150 quickly became one of the most popular computers of its time, and is considered to be one of the most influential computer designs.
And it was developed here in Boca Raton. Not Silicon Valley, not New York, but in Boca Raton, Florida.
At the end of the day, we might be a great city for leisure and relaxation, but we’re also a hard-working city with an impressive resume that screams anything but lazy.
