R.J. Reynolds Tower is definitely one reason to love Winston-Salem. The 1929 building was architect William Lamb’s model for another of his projects—one that would revolutionize his field. R.J. Reynolds Tower is the prototype of the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world when it was finished in 1931. Here are ten more reasons to love our city.

#1 Community Spirit (with a side of pinto beans)
As the superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, Donald L. Martin, Jr., Ed. D., knows he can’t do his job well without community support. He loves Winston-Salem because he gets plenty of it here.

“There’s such a collaborative spirit to get things done,” he says. “People work together and help each other, and that’s something I really like in a community to work and live in.”

Martin had the same job in Nicholasville, Ky., Southgate, Ky., and Salisbury.

“Those smaller communities didn’t have the capacity of a city with more resources,” says Martin. “We’re big enough to have the resources to do things, but small enough that we don’t become isolated.”

Cloverdale Kitchen, near his office, is another reason he loves Winston-Salem.

“I pretty much can tell you the vegetable of the day for every day of the week,” he says. “The chicken and rice soup is great. That, with pinto beans, turnip greens, apple sauce and piece of corn bread, is my favorite lunch.”

#2 Jazzy living
Every three months, Jeff Smith (AKA “Smitty”) makes his way to the Arts Council Theater to take in the latest show in Carl Denerson’s Smooth Jazz Series. “The caliber of musicians is better than anything this city has seen before,” says Smith. “It’s great because there’s a different instrument every time. I’ve heard a jazz violinist, a jazz flutist, and last time I heard a jazz saxophonist.”

After the concerts, Smith heads back to his condo in one of downtown’s converted tobacco buildings. He says he appreciates the unique character these revamped spaces give Winston-Salem. Much like the music he enjoys at the Smooth Jazz Series concerts, the condos have a cool, improvisational feel to them.

“I took a risk when I moved in ten years ago, but it has really paid off,” he says. “The value of my unit has tripled, but I’m not going to move. I like living downtown.”

#3 The Burgeoning Arts Scene
Millicent Greason was born and raised in Winston-Salem, but like many 20-somethings she set off to start a new life elsewhere. She spent time in Washington, D.C. She lived for a while in Chapel Hill, then tried Wilmington.

“I always came back because I realized I was just a simple hometown girl,” she says.

Greason was more than that. She was also an art lover with an itch to be actively involved in the creative community. Eight years ago, she bought Urban Artware, a gallery and retail store in the heart of Winston-Salem’s Downtown Arts District, and has been showcasing local artists there ever since.

“I love Winston-Salem because there are a lot more opportunities in an up-and-coming place like this than there are in a place that has already happened,” she says. “That makes this community very attractive to creative people. It seems like a lot of artists are already here or are drawn here because of the creative climate.”

Greason says she expects all the residential and commercial development downtown to foster the local arts scene. And in the meantime, she says she and her fellow independent gallery owners are too invested in their neighborhood to yield to urban growth.

“The Arts District has always been an organic, grass-roots sort of thing,” she says. “We fought long and hard to keep the neighborhood here, and I think that will help it retain its quirky charm.”

#4 A Smooth Commute
Those who drive to Charlotte or Atlanta may be amazed at how relaxed the locals seem when they’re trapped in the snarling traffic plaguing those cities. That’s because they expect it. We don’t. Gridlock is a relative rarity in Winston-Salem, even as the city grows.

“I can get anywhere I want to in 20 minutes,” claims Gayle Anderson, president and CEO of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce. “You don’t have to factor in travel time no matter where you’re trying to go.”

Rarely has Anderson been forced to go directly to an evening event from work, for instance. She says she always has time to go home first. And she has practically never been late to a business meeting because of traffic.

“Even in our worst of times, you may not want to take US-52 but you have other options,” she says. “There are other routes to get where you need to go.”

Anderson knows her traffic. She grew up in Cleveland and lived for a time in Charlotte before moving here 27 years ago. She says this city has grown at a more manageable rate, helping it avoid the traffic snafus that riddle even the Triangle today.

The absence of bad traffic is one of many reasons Anderson loves Winston-Salem. Among the other items on her laundry list are local festivals, architecture, a relatively low cost of living and a breadth of ethnic restaurants.

“It’s the combination of all those things that makes this city great,” she says, trying hard to wriggle out of picking one or two. But just ask Joe Commuter in Charlotte, and he’ll probably tell you that the smooth morning drive should be at or near the top of Anderson’s list.

#5 World-class Universities
Winston-Salem has always felt like home to Edwin Wilson, provost emeritus at Wake Forest University. He and his family would drive here from Eden to shop and see a movie. And while he was working at Wake Forest College, it relocated here in 1956.

“I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be,” he says. “For me, the presence of Wake Forest and my career here have been central to everything I’ve done. I like to partake in campus life by going to plays, concerts, lectures, and all the other things the university has to offer.”

Over the years, he has enjoyed concerts by opera singer Marion Anderson and piano virtuoso Arthur Rubenstein. He has been captivated by a series of Gilbert and Sullivan plays directed by British director James Dodding.

“I also remember the presidential debates we had, the one between the first George Bush and Michael Dukakis, and then Bush and Gore,” he says. “I remember going twice to hear Jimmy Carter. I remember hearing U.S. Senator Sam Ervin when he was here during the Watergate crisis.”

Wake Forest will continue to draw big names to Winston-Salem. And the good news is Winston-Salem State, founded in 1892, is also helping to put our city on the map by attracting top-notch speakers and events.

#6 Serenity now!
Like many of us, Bowman Gray has a job that can be pretty stressful. He is the investment vice president at MJSK, Inc., a financial firm that provides investment banking, securities brokerage, asset management, and other financial services to individuals and institutions.

Gray can be called, e-mailed and paged anywhere at anytime, and he often is. So if he wants to have a little peace and quiet, he has to find it himself. Good thing he lives in Winston-Salem, a city with a number of refuges for the cell-phone addled professional. His favorite spot is Reynolda Gardens.

“I’ll leave the cell phone in my car and just walk and take it all in,” says Gray. “I never sit down. I do my best decompressing while I’m walking.”

Now, if only he could spend more time in Reynolda Gardens - or any other quiet corner in the city, for that matter. Gray says he gets to the gardens once every two weeks if he’s lucky, but those few moments can take him pretty far.

“[Reynolda Gardens] is a good place for me to ground myself and put things back in perspective, particularly after I’ve had a long day,” he says. “I’m able to shed all the stuff that overtakes me when things get difficult at work.”

#7 The Dixie Classic Fair
Cameron Kent graduated from Wake Forest University in 1979 and has been a reporter and anchor at WXII 12 News for more than 22 years. There are plenty of things he loves about Winston-Salem, but the summer wouldn’t end properly for him and his family without a trip to the Dixie Classic Fair.

“I go twice every year,” he says. “One night for the midway rides and games, one night for the animals and exhibits, and both nights for the food.”

His wife, Sue, is surely glad the fair is just once a year, though. If it was any more frequent, it might kill her husband. Consider his Dixie Classic diet.

“I have a couple of Polish sausages, a funnel cake, a fried Oreo, and then wash it all down with root beer,” he says. “Dinner of champions.”

#8 Wide open spaces
When Richard Emmett moved to Winston-Salem in the mid-90s, he says he was drawn by the city’s open and accessible arts community.

“I still enjoy and appreciate the incredible array of arts options our community offers,” says Emmett, executive director of the Children’s Theatre. “The arts never fail to lift my spirits, nourish my soul, and stir my creative juices.”

But these days, Emmett’s priorities are a little different. Part of that is fatherhood, but working up to 60 hours a week in a basement also has something to do with it.

“These days, what I enjoy the most about Winston is the abundance of parks and other outdoor places where I can get away from e-mails and phone calls,” he says.

“There’s nothing like ending the day by going outside for a stroll, a bike ride, or just sitting on a playground or in a field and watching my boys, Aubrey and Levi, play.”

Emmett’s office in the Children’s Theatre has no windows at all, while his office space at The Garage, an alternative music and film venue, has a few windows but is still in a basement. Fresh air is in short supply when he’s working.

So when the Emmett family gets out, they don’t mess around. They roam and play in virtually every park in the city, including Washington Park, Corpening Plaza, Miller Park, Bethabara Park, Hanes Park, and Salem Lake. They also log their leisure time at various school playgrounds, fields, and off-the-beaten-path roads to nowhere. Where ever they go, they’re rarely chased away by angry property owners.

“I find that Winston is ultra-friendly when it comes to outdoor places to enjoy the fresh air and get away from the daily grind,” he says.

Emmett has lived and worked in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Miami. He says that while those cities also have good outdoor parks and recreation areas, they have the traffic and congestion that come with bigger cities. As a father, Emmett has a greater appreciation for Winston-Salem’s smaller size and breadth of park space.

“Right now in my life, one of the most enjoyable things is to get outside with my kids after work during the late afternoon and evening when I’m not working at The Garage,” says Emmett. “And Winston provides ample places and spaces to do that.”

#9 A Resilient Economy
Say what you want about the weather, traffic and beautiful parks. If Winston-Salem wasn’t a good place to do business, this wouldn’t be an easy place to live.

The city’s economy is strong and sturdy, however, and it’s one of the main reasons Mayor Allen Joines loves living and working here.

“We have an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude that has helped us absorb a number of economic hits,” says Joines. “We’ve always bounced back.”

Losses in the banking, tobacco and furniture industries, for instance, have been softened by a burgeoning business community based in the sciences and technology. Joines says attracting the Dell manufacturing plant exemplifies the community’s ability to pull together and adapt to change.

“We had a task force of community individuals representing our schools and county that worked on that,” says Joines. “A number of obstacles came up during recruitment time, but because of everyone’s positive spirit we were able to work through them.”

The upshot is that Winston-Salem’s unemployment rate never really bottoms out. Joines says it remains lower than the state average and well below the national average.

#10 Location, location, location
Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, loves Winston-Salem because getting away is a lot easier to do here than where he used to live.

Before moving to the Triad in 2004, Atala was the director of Tissue Engineering and Cellular Therapeutics at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He says planning a getaway to New England was often complicated.

“The temperature starts dropping soon after Labor Day, and it rarely gets warm before June,” he says. “And the traffic can really limit one’s schedule and the ability to get away for short visits.”

Atala’s work usually affords him only spur-of-the-moment opporunities for weekend trips. He can take more of them here.

“It is much easier to get away and enjoy the ocean, lakes or mountains here on short notice,” he says. “Not much advanced planning is needed.”

Atala says it’s also easy to bolt the area altogether. He has taken flights out of Charlotte, Raleigh and Piedmont Triad International airport for both business and pleasure.

“The easy access to direct flights reduces the chances of airport delays and allows for a more efficient travel schedule that minimizes the time away from home,” he says.