Our community will be breaking the 100,000 resident ceiling in the near future, and I was curious about what that means to us. Intuitively we notice that it sounds more impressive to tell people about our community when we say it is a population of 100,000, but I was curious if there were other benefits, like having CPI tracked, or creating our own economy, or becoming a ???

As background, we are a rural community with no regional neighbors of any size within the next 300 miles, and we had been significantly undercounted by the US Census and our State demographer, so we have only just become a community of 97,000 instead of 88,000.

1. RETAIL: Many retailers won't even consider a market less than 100k population Suddenly at 100k, radar screens begin 'seeing lots of green'.
2. EMPLOYMENT: Critical mass of employees means more employers will begin looking at the market as a legitimate location option (thus helping to 'graduate' from merely an isolated small town or exclusively a bedroom community)
3. RATE OF GROWTH: I believe an even more important metric to keep an eye on is the velocity at which your community is growing (ie. is it reaching 100k at a turtle's pace, or 'breaking ribbons' as it passes 100k?) This will be looked at with a very careful eye by outsiders, since a community's failure or vision to provide the necessary infrastructure commensurate with that growth will help to predict the sustainability of the population once it 'arrives'.