ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
NOW YOU SEE 'EM, now you don't. Seems Money magazine's hot little items aren't towns at all but (blush) precincts.
Sorry, Salem.
A place called Salem, Va., made Money magazine's list of America's ``50 Hottest Little Boomtowns'' in its April issue. But the magazine wasn't talking about the Roanoke Valley city known for Roanoke College and a winning high school football team.
The national magazine's editors actually were thinking about a voting precinct in Spotsylvania County, near Richmond, also called Salem.
A Money spokeswoman said readers may have been confused, because all of Money's boomtowns are really precincts, even though they appear under the heading "Town" in a chart on page 127 of the issue.
"We're getting a lot of calls," said spokeswoman Patty Straus. "The Salem we're talking about is an election district."
Another entry in Money's chart, "Newport, Va.," is the name of a community northwest of Blacksburg. But it actually refers to a precinct in Isle of Wight County in Southside Virginia.
That understood, the chart does identify two Bedford County precincts as offering many professional and technical jobs, reasonably priced housing and above-average incomes in a rural setting - Money's criteria for a boomtown.
One is a precinct named Jefferson. According to the magazine's chart, it boasted 14,570 residents of the Forest area near Lynchburg, had three-bedroom homes available for $150,000 and posted a median household income of $40,384. The U.S. non-metro median household income is $22,483.
The other precinct had 14,088 residents, a median income of $28,285 and three-bedroom homes for $110,000. The precinct's name? Blue Ridge.
But don't confuse it with the community along U.S. 460 called Blue Ridge. That one is in Botetourt County.
LENGTH: Short : 43 linesby CNB