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• Tompkins County exemplifies a small-town atmosphere while showcasing the qualities of a larger metropolitan city through its abundance of quality restaurants, theatre, arts, shopping and cultural activities.
• The area offers the invigorating richness of four full seasons and a lifestyle that is culturally rich, engagingly diverse, and refreshingly laid back. Vibrant commerce keeps unemployment below three percent!
• Tompkins County is just five hours from NYC, three hours from Niagara Falls, two hours from Rochester and four hours from Philadelphia.
• Education is the largest industry, with three very different and highly respected institutions of higher learning - Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College (known as TC3) - the community is filled with respected researchers, writers, inventors, artists and teachers.
• Ithaca is host to over 150 waterfalls, which lie within a 10-mile radius.
• Tompkins County is home to three gorge parks. (There are only six within the entire state of New York.)
• An avid boater can sail from the open ocean through the locks of the New York State Erie Canal, down Cayuga Lake to Ithaca.
• The Sagan Planet Walk, built to honor the memory of Ithaca resident and Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan, is a true-to-scale model of our solar system. It is one of the only walkable "planet walks" in the world. The Sciencenter, Ithaca's hands-on museum and outdoor science playground, is the sponsor of the Sagan Planet Walk, and is one of eight museums involved in the partnership of educational attractions called the Discovery Trail. Some others include the Museum of the Earth and Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology.
• Tompkins County's Regional Airport is a first-class facility serving Ithaca and the Finger Lakes area. Flights connect to major cities across the northeast and midwest.
• Ithaca offers more restaurants per capita than New York City.
• The famous Moosewood Restaurant is located in Ithaca, and two of its famous cookbooks that present recipes for scrumptious vegetarian meals have won James Beard Awards in the healthy focus and vegetarian categories.
• The September/October 2003 issue of Organic Style magazine voted Ithaca the "best healthy city in the Northeast."
• The annual Ithaca Festival is a unique family-oriented celebration of the arts, attracting 35,000 people to the community.
• The downtown Ithaca Commons was named one of the New York's top design projects of the century by the state chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
• With over 128 different species of fish in the Finger Lakes region, it is not surprising to see that Cayuga Lake was selected one of the top 10 bass-fishing lakes by Sports Afield magazine.
• Ithaca was once known as the nation's "Film Capital," because from 1910-1920 silent movies such as The Perils of Pauline were produced at Wharton Studios in Stewart Park.
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