"2% growth since 2000 puts Billings into new category" city official says

 

It's not official, but the Magic City may have hit the magic number of 100,000.

Candi Beaudry, interim director of the City-County Planning Department, recently estimated the population of Billings at 101,182.

She did so by taking the official 2000 Census population of Billings, 89,847, and increasing it by 2 percent a year, based on the city's estimated rate of growth. That made sense to Jim Sylvester, an economist who specializes in demographic analysis at the Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research in Missoula.

"It totally sounds good," Sylvester said. "It's not out of whack.”

 

Beaudry said the 2 percent growth rate was based on findings of a Denver consultant who worked on several Billings-area projects in 2004. The consultant, David Evans and Associates, determined that the number of dwelling units had increased by 1.5 percent in 2002, the most recent year for which figures were then available, while employment had increased by 2 percent in the same period.

At a growth rate of 1.5 percent since 2000, Billings would have reached a population of 98,243 by this year, or 101,182 based on 2 percent growth. Beaudry said she is using the higher rate because Billings appears to be booming.

In 2005, 858 lots were created as part of the subdivision process, up from 218 lots in 2004 and 512 lots in 2003. Further evidence of robust growth was the fact that the City Council annexed 69 acres into the city in 2005 and 122 acres in 2004.

"We could easily have surpassed that 2 percent," Beaudry said.

She also found partial confirmation in 2004 population estimates released last year by the Census Bureau. The bureau pegged the population of Billings at 96,977 as of July 1, 2004, which is between Beaudry's estimates for that year based on growth rates of 1.5 percent -- which yielded a population estimate of 95,360 -- and 2 percent -- for an estimated population of 97,253.

"We felt we were at least consistent with their estimates," Beaudry said. "We would have adjusted it if the census had come up with something different."

So, if Billings has reached the 100,000 mark, what does it mean?

Well, to offer one perfectly useless illustration, if the average height of a Billings resident were 4 feet (accounting for a range of sizes between infants and adult basketball players) and all 101,182 of us lay down head to toe along Interstate 90, the line of people would stretch a bit over 76 miles, almost all the way from Billings to Big Timber.

It would also mark the first time any city in Montana has topped 100,000 people ... maybe. Some Butte boosters have claimed that the Mining City passed that number in the early years of the 20th century, but the Census Bureau officially says the city's population peaked at 60,313 in 1920. You could argue that if there was a city where four in 10 people wanted to make themselves scarce when the government came knocking, it would have been Butte.

In the opinion of Ellen Crain, director of the Butte Archives, Butte probably came close to 100,000 but never surpassed it. The 1917 edition of the R.L. Polk City Directory estimated the population of Butte at 91,000 that year, Crain said, arriving at that figure by adding 1.2 people to each head of household identified in the directory.

Crain said that number could be low, given the larger families then. David Emmons, writing in "The Butte Irish," said census statistics showed that in 1900, "there were 135 Irish widows under fifty years of age with a combined total of 392 children living at home; in 1910, the figures were 434 and 1,117."

Not that speculation matters with the Census Bureau. The official count is the only one that counts, and Butte never neared 100,000, according to the census folks.

But if Billings has reached 100,000, doesn't that somehow put us on the map? Won't it attract even more development, triggering even stronger growth?

Sylvester, with the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said it was much more important when, decades ago, Billings hit 50,000, with a contiguous-area population of 75,000. That made the city officially a "metropolitan statistical area," which means the Census Bureau releases all sorts of information on it. That information is used by retailers, marketing firms and others, Sylvester said, and puts a city "on the radar."

Scott Rickard, with the Center for Applied Economic Research at Montana State University-Billings, said he suspects some grants or aid packages are available only to cities with populations over 100,000. He also said reaching that number might increase a city's visibility, putting it on a few more "best of" or "places rated" lists.

"If inclusion in one of these lists means that a company exec sees Billings and thinks, 'Hmm, maybe we can expand there,' then it obviously helps," he said.

But developer Steve Corning is doubtful.

"That 100,000 threshold always seemed to me like another urban legend," he said. Because Billings has for many years been a retail hub for a vast area, serving a market of 350,000 to 400,000 people, reaching a population of 100,000 is almost meaningless, he said.

As for the growth estimates, Corning thinks 1.5 percent is probably low. He thinks it's more likely in the 2 to 3 percent range, which would make the idea of having reached the 100,000 plateau entirely plausible -- regardless of whether it carries any significance.

"As human beings we tend to think in terms of round numbers ... but I don't think it has much effect," Corning said.