Susan Gleason ate dinner Wednesday in the center of the universe.

Gleason, director of regional assets and metrics for the nonprofit economic development organization Thrive, told about 35 members of the Columbia County Economic Development Corp. at the group's annual dinner that several aspects of the county - including a transportation system that includes three interstate highways - makes it stand out among the other seven counties in the region.

"While some people around here might think Madison is the center of our universe. That isn't true - Portage is," she said.

Normally, Gleason said, Thrive thinks of all eight participating counties - Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Green, Iowa, Jefferson, Rock and Sauk - as being one unified region, united in its assets and its opportunities for growth.

But when she began counting the ways that Columbia County stands out, the area's easy, quick highway access to destinations such as Madison, Baraboo and Fond du Lac was just the start of it.

Gleason drew gasps and exclamations of "wow" when she noted that productivity of Columbia County's businesses and industries exceeds the average of both the state and the region.

Productivity is measured by how many dollars of return that businesses get for every dollar they invest in costs of doing business, principally labor.

In Wisconsin, businesses earn, on average, $1.68 for every dollar invested. In the eight-county Thrive region, the productivity is slightly higher at $1.71.

In Columbia County, the rate is $2.10. "This means," she said, "that you're producing higher value-added products."

And, in a time when manufacturing nationwide is perceived as stagnant, Columbia County is more than holding its own.

By Thrive statistics, the state experienced a decline of 8.5 percent in its manufacturing between 2000 and 2006, and the Thrive region's manufacturing decline was 7.3 percent.

Columbia County's manufacturing decline during the same time period: 0.05 percent.

"A lot of your manufacturing is apparently pretty stable," Gleason said.

All this is happening, she said, in a county that's on the low end of population in the region. A little more than a million people live in the region, half of them in Dane County. Columbia County, on the other hand, is pretty close to Sauk County at the bottom of the population heap, with about 56,000 people.

And, the county's per-capita annual income of $34,800 runs slightly higher than the region's per-capita income of $34,500, and slightly lower than the state per-capita income of $36,000. But that number goes even lower, to $30,400, when it factors in only the county residents who also work in Columbia County, rather than commuting to jobs, mainly in Dane County, that are higher paying.

Despite the lower-than-average per capita income level, 75 percent of the county's residents own their homes (compared to 65 percent in the state), and Columbia County has a higher-than-average percentage of residents who have health insurance, Gleason said.

Some of the county's key assets, according to Gleason, include its productive agriculture industry, ample health care and medical facilities, prospering industries such as food processing and metals manufacturing and, of course, a transportation system that includes Interstates 39, 90 and 94.

This prompted Fred Teitgen of Poynette, a Columbia County supervisor, to pipe up, "We've got railroads, too."

Gleason said Columbia County's extensive rail system, including three stops for the Amtrak passenger rail (in Columbus, Portage and Wisconsin Dells), point to a possible future as a transportation center if high-speed rail should come through the county.

But all this does not mean there's no room for improvement, she said.

Thrive has set several goals for the region:

• Growing its regional food production and processing - including placing more local foods into local supermarkets.

• Establishing a "21st-century" transportation system that includes not only cars and railroads, but efforts toward bike- and pedestrian-friendliness.

• Positioning the region as a national and world leader in a "bio" and "green" economy, including promoting the use of biofuels such as ethanol and switchgrass for generating sustainable energy.

In meeting these and other goals, Gleason said, Thrive is not proposing to recruit new businesses from other communities, but to grow them here.

"We have all these smart folks here," she said, "who can provide all these solutions to sustain the quality of life that brought you here in the first place."