Featured Apartment:
Connecticut- Stamfrod - 1
bedroom - 1 bath - spacious, clean & sunny unit! - Brick Building - Hardwood
Floors - Modern Kitchen - Spacious Living Room - Large Bedroom w/ Double Sliding
Door Closet - Updated Bathroom - Off Street Parking - access to commuter rail,
bus, shops & restaurants, first and last months rent
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About Stamford
Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, one the
top five richest counties in the country. According to 2006 Census Bureau
estimates, the population of the city is 126,745. Its population is rapidly
growing due to an influx of jobs and its commuting distance to New York City.
Stamford is one of the top 4 largest cites in the state of Connecticut. Stamford
is part of the New York metropolitan area.
For the first half of 2004, Stamford was the safest city in the United States
with population over 100,000, according to the FBI. Crime in the New York
metropolitan area in general has diminished since the 1980s and is lower than
many other major U.S. metropolitan areas today. In 2005, Stamford was voted
"The Best City to Reside In" by the magazine United States Living. The city has
one hospital, Stamford Hospital. The city is run by Mayor Dannel Malloy and the
first family who reside on Ocean Drive East.
Stamford made up of into sections (locally a more common term than
"neighborhoods" for these areas), each of which has distinct character owing to
the type of business and industry that thrived there at one time, such as the
South End with its heavy manufacturing. Other areas include Downtown, North
Stamford, Turn of River, Roxbury, Newfield, Belltown, Springdale, Glenbrook,
Hubbard Heights, the East Side, Shippan, Shippan Point, the Cove, the West Side,
Waterside, Westover, Bulls Head, and Long Ridge, which is home to many blue chip
corporations.
North Stamford (zip code 06903) has been nationally ranked as one of the
wealthiest areas in America, and has the highest average household income rate
in Fairfield County, surpassing areas of extremely wealthy towns such as New
Canaan and Greenwich.
Downtown also has a shopping mall, the Stamford Town Center, which opened in
1982. Ridgeway Center, located about a mile north of downtown, is one of the
oldest shopping centers of its type, having been built in the 1940s. It was
renovated in 1998.
Stamford has a cluster of corporate headquarters (many of which moved from New
York in the 1980s both to lower their tax bills and to be closer to the homes of
their top executives). This includes four Fortune 500 Companies, nine Fortune
1000 Companies, thirteen Courant 100 Companies, numerous divisions of large
corporations, as well as a large number of secretive hedge funds. This gives
Stamford one of the largest concentrations of corporations in the nation.
Among the larger companies with headquarters in Stamford are World Wrestling
Entertainment, Xerox and Pitney Bowes. UBS also has a major headquarters here,
boasting North America's largest equities trading floor.
Royal Bank of Scotland announced in October 2005 that it would consolidate its
North American headquarters in downtown Stamford and build the largest trading
floor in North America (the current largest trading floor is in the UBS building
across the street from where the new building is under construction).
Companies also leave Stamford regularly, either to escape the city's traffic
problems or relatively high office rental rates (in which case they often move
to Norwalk, Westport or farther to the east in Fairfield County), as a result of
being acquired by other businesses (in which case they often move out of state),
or for other business reasons. International Paper and MeadWestvaco announced in
2006 that they were leaving the city. Pitney Bowes has kept its headquarters in
the city but, like many other companies, it moved some of its back-office
operations elsewhere (in this case to Shelton). Stamford and Greenwich both rely
on businesses moving in from Manhattan or European companies setting up North
American headquarters in local buildings.