A Ring Study Deep Dive: Athens, GA

Athens, Georgia is a college town approximately 60 miles northeast of Atlanta. It’s home to the University of Georgia, the state's official museum of art and official botanical gardens, and a vibrant visual and performing arts scene.

It could also be the site of your next business location or real estate development if you know more about it. A ring study of Athens will give you a demographic analysis of the area through rich data radii or “rings” sourced from top-quality data inputs.

Let’s take a closer look at a few Ring Studies for Athens, Georgia, and learn more about the area.

What information do you get in a Ring Study?

As a reminder, Ring Studies are visual representations of a specific location and three areas (or rings) surrounding it. For example, we’ve generated two Ring Studies for Athens here, one with 1-, 3-, and 5- mile rings and another with a 1-mile ring only to show you the difference.

Most businesses choose these ring options when generating their Ring Study but the distances are customizable to whatever you need. Smaller rings work better for more populated areas and larger ones are best suited for more rural or less densely populated areas. As with all EASI studies, you can order an Executive, Professional, or Advanced Ring Study for the given location.

Exploring the 1-, 3-, 5- mile Professional Ring Study report

The first part of the Ring Study outlines general family and population characteristics such as family and non-family populations, married families, single families, and children. We can see that Athens has a higher population density closer to the downtown core (3,736.8 people in the 1-mile ring) than in the outer areas (1,349.3 people in the 5-mile ring). That makes sense as the University of Georgia is not far from our study’s center and students would want to live closer to campus. We can also see that there is a higher non-family population in the 1-mile ring (4,207) than family population (2,681), again probably due to the proximity to the university campus.

Looking deeper into the data in the ring study, we’ll find detailed population, household, employment, education, family, and non-family characteristics. The 5-mile ring shows more Owner Occupied Housing units (16,082) than the 1-mile ring, and 9,383 of these have mortgages. That could indicate more homeowners who are not students living further away from the center of town and that they’re more likely to need lending and financial services. They would also be more likely to shop at retail locations relevant to homeowners like at hardware stores and renovation businesses.

The transportation to work data tells an interesting story for Athens.

Nobody in the 1-mile ring takes public transportation to work. That could indicate a very walkable central core, a poor public transportation system, or that many people in that radius do not work. A deeper look into the town is necessary to find out which of those scenarios is most likely. (We took a quick look at the Athens-Clarke County transit map and it does service downtown very well, so there’s obviously something else at work here when it comes to that data.)

Exploring the 1-mile Professional Ring Study report

For comparison, we also generated a 1-mile Professional Ring Study report for Athens.

Since the single-ring report only has one set of data to display, we’ve also included other data and variables to help you gain insights into the area. There are three columns with data displaying the % Total of the area, the EASI Score and the EASI Rank.

As a reminder, the EASI Rank is “a ratio-type rank for a particular geography representing the concentration of the variable compared to the average concentration”. The highest score is an A and the lowest is an E. The EASI Score is “a relative measure using the results of the EASI Rank to arrange the values of a variable into a quintile (20% per group) frequency distribution.” The highest score is 1 and the lowest is the number of areas in the geography.

The 1-mile ring of Athens has a relatively high density with a B- EASI Score but ranks lower when the total population numbers are compared to the rest of the state (164,081 out of 239,780). It has high non-family population and non-family household EASI scores of A and A- respectively. This tracks with a temporary student population and other supporting staff of the university.

Additional EASI data

The single Ring Study also includes some proprietary EASI demographics that are calculated using summaries of various data sources including:

• ZIP Code business patterns
• The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
• Weather data
• Crime statistics
• Bureau of Labor Statistics for consumer price and expenditure statistics

This data is calculated and summarized under relevant headings like EASI Sales Potentials and Quality of Life. Businesses can use this data to identify insights based on factors like temperatures, flooding potential, the daytime population, culture index and mortality index.

In the case of the 1-mile area of central Athens, Georgia, it has a high bargain seekers market, so if your business services lower income brackets or students, it would be a good spot to open a discount store of some kind. It ranks high for culture, amusement, and restaurants while having a decent overall weather rank. That makes it a potentially good spot for open-air markets or businesses, new restaurants, or other cultural businesses or events.

Order your Ring Study today

EASI Ring studies are customizable reports businesses can use to discover more about a specific area. Different ring areas can be added to the report to compare areas, making them perfect for deciding on a new business location or product. The focused one-distance Ring Report gives you more combined information you can use to drill down into the specific variables you’re looking at.

To order a Ring Study for your location and business, contact EASI today. We’re here to help you choose the right level with the right options so you’ll discover the right data relevant to you and your business.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest