Niles Named Best City To Raise Kids In Illinois

By Anna Deem in News on Jan 16, 2011 7:30PM

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, north suburban Niles has been named the "best place to raise your kids" in Illinois. To arrive at this result, the magazine examined 5,418 middle-income communities with fewer than 50,000 residents. They also considered factors such as crime rates, employment and job growth, affordable housing, air quality, ethnic diversity, and access to jobs, parks, theaters, and zoos.

"It's a place where people are born, raised and come back to raise their own children," said Niles Chamber of Commerce Director Katie Schneider, who also mentioned to the Chicago Sun-Times that Niles has an industrial base that includes a Coca-Cola bottling plant, in addition to a vibrant community with several large shopping centers such as Golf Mill. There is also an increasing number of Korean shops, as 14 percent of Niles' population is Asian.

Niles has also done well economically speaking, with their unemployment rate dropping from 9.6 percent in October 2009 to 7.8 percent this past October, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Their schools also outperform in the statewide average on standardized tests. Bloomberg Businessweek also found that North College Hill, Ohio, near Cincinnati, and Rowland Height, California, outside Los Angeles, are also among the best places to raise children.