I think it would be even better if it was a cab ride from a Southwest
Arlines airport. This would make it fast and cheap for people to
conduct business at HQ. The two nearest cities with soaring bases that
fit this are Albuquerque and Denver.

A thought on this last point. Over the last 7 years, I've been part of
a team which started up a global company. Despite extensive use of
phone, video, Web meetings, etc. there's still no substitute for
face-to-face interaction. I've noticed that the ability to get an
executive to visit any location is almost directly proportional to the
quality of the airline service. I'm sure it's the same for our
board members, who are, for the most part, extremely busy individuals .
Even if we do move toward more of a "virtual organization" (which I
fully support), we still ought to be in a position to drop in (planned
or unplanned) on HQ (even if HQ is just 5,000 square feet in some
office complex). As a straw model, I'd say that any location we
choose must be within a 1 hour drive of a major airport (defined as
one having direct service from any of the 20 or so major hubs in the
US). There's obviously a lot more to site selection than that, but
it's certainly one of the knockout criteria in my book.

P3