ILLINOIS — A new survey from WalletHub ranks Illinois in the top five states that are “fun places to live.”
Illinois came in right behind California, Florida, Nevada and New York.
“Any good publicity is good publicly,” said professor Keith Boeckelman of Western Illinois University.
Boeckelman contributed some research to the Fun State study.
“A lot of people don’t think of Illinois as a fun place in the same way they think of Florida and Nevada,” Boeckelman said. “So it is a little surprising.”
When it comes to entertainment and leisure activities, Illinois ticks just about every box.
“It’s not just sports teams,” Boeckelman said. “High end restaurants, music venues, live theater, these kinds of things help attract the very highly skilled, mobile young tech workers.”
To come up with its rankings, WalletHub researchers compared “entertainment and recreation” and “nightlife” across the 50 states. They used a point system and 26 metrics to figure out the best states for “a jolly good time that won’t break the bank”.
They looked for states with a wide variety of activities so that all types of people – from bird watchers and bookworms to night-clubbers and sports enthusiasts – would have budget-friendly fun things to do on their days off. Nightlife options, shoreline mileage, the number of movie theaters and the accessibility of parks and scenic areas were some of the criteria.
Boeckelman was a bit taken aback to see in the survey that Illinois’ nightlife was ranked higher than New York’s. Maybe that had to do with affordability, he wondered. Prices for beer and mixed drinks were factored in.
The fact that Illinois ranked so well on the fun scale means that state-sponsored tourism campaigns are paying off, Boeckelman said.
“Illinois has done a pretty good job of leveraging all its advantages and being strategic in its tourism campaign,” Boeckelman said.
The WalletHub survey won’t result in a flood of new tourists to the state, but it does burnish the state’s profile as a state where a worker can lead a full life, a consideration for companies, Boeckelman said.
“Historically, Illinois has not provided the same kinds of tax and other incentives that states that rank lower on the fun scale do,” he said.
To close deals with employers who are state shopping, Illinois may need to do more to match incentive packages from other states, he said.
Being a “fun state” and having that national image is icing on the cake – not a key deciding factor – when a major corporation is determining whether or not to come to Illinois and make a significant investment here, Boeckelman said.
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