I need your help. My wifes employer is moving her job
to Pheonix next year. We have to decide if we would like
to go. We need information on the area. Not the touristy
information we have gotten from our searches so far.
Things like how did you/your kids feel about the schools,
do you generally feel safe in the city, things like that.
How different is it from the east coast? We live in
Connecticut, so are right in between NYC and Boston. I
cannot imagine Pheonix can offer more that these two cities
in the way of art, music, theatre, ect. So anything anyone
can tell me about it, good or bad, would be appreciated.
Thanks
I’m not an expert on Pheonix, but Strainger and Padeye live there. You might want to start a thread (maybe on MPSIMS, I’m not sure if they check out General Questions or not)with their name in the title to grab their attention.
I lived in Mesa a few years. (It is just east of Phoenix and Scottsdale.) Since Mesa is run pretty much by Mormons, the schools and neighborhoods are excellent. There is much entertainment, but not much of “high” culture. They have a symphony and opera, but certainly not many plays and things.
Where they area shines is outdoor activities. You are close to numerous lakes and mountains, and large parks and good hiking (up camelback mountain) just a few minutes from downtown Phoenix.
A gentle correction: it’s PhOEnix.
I used to live there in the mid-1990’s. Doubt it’s changed much, but at the time, I found it a beautiful, relatively inexpensive, laid-back place. Really liked the fact that I could wake up at 8am in January and it would already be warm enough to hang out laundry or take a walk in shorts and a tank top and be perfectly comfortable. People were friendly and mostly had a ‘live and let live’ attitude. It was also nice having several mountains ranging in climbing difficulty from a leisurely stroll to the top (Squaw Peak) to almost hand-over-hand serious challenge (Camelback), all of which are located right in the immediate metropolitan area. I also liked the fact that you could have a pretty decent home for much lower prices than you’d pay on the East or West coasts; but I don’t know if that still applies now. Phoenix underwent something of a population boom during the last few years, but everyone I know there says it’s still great.
There’s plenty of culture, too. Maybe it’s not quite at the Boston/NYC level, but I don’t think you’ll miss the East Coast too much. Plenty of sporting events, tons of art galleries (and it’s not all Western/Native American stuff either), a great children’s theater, museums galore and there’s loads of great day trips you can take. For example, the Grand Canyon is just over two hours away, and you’ll have the advantage of being able to visit it in the off-season.
Schools seemed to be pretty good, although I didn’t go to any nor did I have kids. But my cousins were educated there and I worked with a bunch of kids in high schools all over the city, and they were the most together, socially aware, warm, outgoing young people I’ve ever met. But that’s JMO, ok?
Ok, some negative(ish) things. Phoenix is a big city, and it’s certainly not immune from crime. There’s a lot of gang activity and several people I knew got held up at gunpoint. We lived in a an apartment building in a fairly good part of town but convenience store holdups, car breakins (my car was broken into twice), and fighing neighbor incidents still happened like they do anywhere. If you’re concerned about the crime rates in a neighborhood you’re interested in, just contact the police department and ask them what incidents have been reported there over the last year or two. They’ll be glad to tell you.
I hope this was of some assistance to you. I’ll end this by saying that I’ve lived in many cities in the US and Phoenix is the ONLY one I want to return to someday, hopefully very soon. Good luck to you, must say I’m a little jealous!
Beth
I’m a Phoenix native, having grown up and spent just about all my life there until the last year or so, and I’d say that Rock-n-Rolga is pretty much on the money with her summary.
Though, R-n-R, you must have lived in a much more seedy neighborhood than I did…several people held up at gunpoint? I wasn’t exactly in the rich part of town, but the worst I can recall was a few people’s homes being broken into over the years; pretty typical big city stuff IMHO. It did seem like a disproportionate amount of the crime I knew about happened to folks I knew who lived in apartments, so maybe that explains the difference.
Two other things to keep in mind about Phoenix, if they’re the type of things that would bother you:
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Sprawl/traffic. Growth is basically unchecked in the metro area, and as a result the freeway system is for the most part only now catching up to the growth that happened 10 or 15 years ago. This is particularly noticeable at (surprise!) rush hour, especially if you’re unlucky enough to have to commute in and out of downtown on I-17 (like I did) or U.S. 60.
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Pollution. It’s not quite to the point of, say, Los Angeles, but Phoenix does get more than its fair share of ozone alerts and other pollution advisories.
That said, I simply can’t wait to get back there some day; IMHO it’s one of the better places in the U.S. to live and will be for some time. (Unless the invading hordes of ex-southern Californians succeed in turning it into a desert version of L.A.)
To be fair, two of victims that I knew worked with me in nightclubs and were shopping after midnight, and had quite a lot of cash on them. The second of the late night victims was a female bartender, and she got pistolwhipped badly during the incident - we learned our lesson about latenight shopping after that. One other victim that was just an acquaintance of mine and the robbery happened about at 5pm at 7-11. It was so fast that he wasn’t even sure if it was a real gun! All the robberies happened within half a mile of where I lived on west Indian School road and 42nd Street, not quite in Scottsdale, but fairly far from the east side. Also these three incidents happened over an 18 month period, not all the time. Hope my first post was not misleading to anyone in that way.
But yeah, schief2, you’re right - no one I knew who had a house seemed to have the problems the apartments had (w/ car breakins and fights and the like). So if you *have *to rent, try to get a house. If you can’t rent a house, then avoid the “utilities paid” apartments even if they do save you inital hassle of deposits and that. They’re just too fly by night and really don’t screen potential renters like the other complexes do, so your neighbors could be anyone. Forewarned is forearmed!
And just to offset the negative things I said, here’s one more positive about Phoenix - there’s lots of great Japanese fast food restaurants! Tokyo Express, Kyoto Bowl, Oyako Bowl, Yoshi’s…each with several stores throughout the valley. And the food they serve is healthy and simple but really tasty (not fried, salty, greasy and full of trashy filler stuff like similar places here in the South)!
Beth, who is craving a nice Chicken Teriyaki from Kyoto Bowl now - yum YUM!
I meant to say that all the incidents happened on EAST Indian School road and 42nd St., not quite in Scottsdale, but far from the WEST side (Yes, it makes a big difference! The West side is generally regarded as the worse side of town).
Sorry!
I moved to Mesa from Seattle 12 years ago. This place has changed a lot in the last 3 years. Population is out of control (IMHO).
Mesa, Chandler, Paridise Valley are all nice places to live.
Think in terms of commute. No longer than a 20 min commute or you will tear your hair out on the freeway. Look into side streets…near the freeway is good…next to the freeway is very bad…same for the airport.
Live near where you work…except in Phoenix—unless you have a lot of money to spend on housing. A good home there starts at $200,000 and can be as high as $500,000. Actually that’s right about all over the valley.
Rent is not bad in Mesa and Tempe. Schools are ok too. Check out http://www.azfamily.com for local info. The page talks about schools and has housing info too.
Come down for a week…once in the summer…once in the winter if you get a chance. It’s like 2 totally different places. Remember…we get “winter visitors” or I like to call them…“got my DL out of a cracker jack box so I drive like a moron.”
Check out info on the Outdoors attractions we have. In general…we are very laid back. Most employers are corprate casual (ie. jeans and T-shirts) Expect to hear a lot of country music. We like having art and music festivls. And not everything is southwestern…just a large majority.
We have more choices on where to shop, go to school and what new restraunt to check out.
Auto insurance is very dependant on where you live…can be as much as a $100 difference depending on the area.
If you have gen quest you like to ask me about the phoenix metro area: email is lissabeth777@yahoo.com
OK, well we haven’t made the final decision, but in 2 weeks her company sends us out for the weekend. I’ll hopefully be being set up with a meeting with some employers in my field through a friend who moved back east. I’m a little nervous, because while I’ve traveled quite a bit, I’ve always lived within 20 miles of where I grew up. A belated thanks to all you who replied to me. This was one of my 1st posts and I had totally forgotten about it until now.