I’d like to know a little about Fort Wayne Indiana. There is a job opening I am considering applying for in Fort Wayne and I really don’t know anything about that area. I have just started looking into it but would like to hear what others think about the area.
I love Texas but due to recent life changes, now is a good time to consider other things.
Any information would be helpful, but I am mainly interested in how it is to live there.
I’m just now looking into the area in regards to taxes and cost of living. Any other information and experiences would be appreciated.
One of the most important things you have to consider when relocating for a job, is what are the other employment opportunities in the area. Because once there, you might not like the job, they might lay you off, so you have to consider that. Also, look at the labor pool there too. Because after your first year there, you don’t get a raise or whatever they don’t come through on, they know they got you because you moved there for the job and there might not be any other jobs available that you’d like to take. If you were moving to a large employment area that would be different, but look closely at Fort Wayne and ask yourself, “if I already lived here what other jobs are available to me?”.
It’s been nearly 15 years since I left Indiana, so some things may have changed, but I’ll give it a go.
Fort Wayne is a very conservative community and there is a strong religious presence there. Other than that, it’s your typical, friendly, Midwestern city. The population is right about 250k, which makes it a big city for Indiana, but isn’t a big city by most definitions. It’s located at the confluence of 3 rivers and efforts have been made to take the riverfront areas out of their industrial past and into a more recreationally-focused neighborhood. It used to be a big industrial town, but most of that is gone now and I’m honestly not sure what may have replaced it. Schools are pretty good, there is a lot of nice public amenities - they have a great zoo, amazingly nice for a city of its size.
Weather is typical Midwest - cold winters, hot humid summers - although it’s just enough south of the Great Lakes that you are out of the heavy snow band. Think average snowfall and you’ve got it.
There are a number of colleges in the area - most small and religious - but some are quite good.
Two friends of mine, one of them among my oldest and closest, live in Ft. Wayne. (Both of them work for Sweetwater Sound, a thriving online retailer of musical and recording gear, so they are likely to be slightly insulated from the general Midwest manufacturing downturn.) Both of them seem to love it: very Midwestern in the way of Midwestern cities that do not intersect major interstate highways.
I was raised in IN and ended up in Naptown (a locally-hated name for Indianapolis). I built enough of a resume to go into the Travel Agent (remember those?) and request a flight to CA, giving departure date.
Agent: Return? (inquiring as to return schedule)
Me: Never.
Agent:
If you don’t attend (and be a member of) a conservative-to-moderate Protestant Church, you’d best keep that fact to yourself.
I think it is now OK to drive a ‘Foreign’ car - didn’t used to be - there were large factories in IN (Muncie and Naptown esp) which made parts for Detroit.
‘Foreign’ car = “Taking the food off our plates”.
Also, IN politics have been heading pretty consistently in one direction. If you are white, Christian, and Republican, I suspect you could be very happy. If not, well, you’ll have to figure out how much that kinda thing will bother you, and your social options will be more limited.
Ft Wayne is THE big city for quite a while around. In a little over an hour or 2 you can get to lots of places like South Bend, Toledo, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis. But there are a lot of beans and corn in between.
These days Toyota and Honda both have large manufacturing facilities in Indiana, which provide lots of jobs. Driving a “foreign car” doesn’t seem to be too big a deal anymore.
I’m only marginally familiar with Fort Wayne, but it does seem to be a typical midwestern small city. Indiana in general is quite conservative, although the larger cities tend to be a touch more liberal. Of course, liberal by Indiana standards is still fairly conservative by national standards. Our “liberal” Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly, is pro-life and generally opposed to gun control measures, for example, although he does support same-sex marriage.
The zoo, as mentioned, is very impressive. There’s also a pretty good art museum, a recreation of the 19th century fort that gave the city its name, and a surprisingly interesting Firefighters Museum. In addition to the religious universities that others have mentioned, there is also Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, which is a cooperative regional campus of both IU and Purdue. The public library is large and active, and features a very good genealogy collection.
Current resident here. Cost of living is pretty reasonable. You can buy a lot of house for 100K with a little shopping. Rents seem kind of high to me.
It is a very conservative area, more so in the outlying towns than in the city itself. FW has had Democratic mayor for a while now. It is getting to be a much more diverse city. Large Black and Hispanic populations and now more Asian and Middle Easterners. Someone up thread called it a Protestant area but there is and always has been a large Catholic presence. There is at least one large Jewish congregation that has been here for a very long time.
I would agree Ft Wayne is pretty diverse these days. I think the religion and conservatism is a bit overblown in some posts above. I grew up very near Ft Wayne and spent a lot of time there as it’s the only metro area for quite a distance. It’s 2.5 hours from Chicago, which isn’t bad for a weekend trip.
There’s a lot to do in the city. A nice zoo, professional basketball, baseball and hockey (not NBA, MLB or NHL, obviously, but the teams are popular in the city). Good shopping. And, as mentioned, the cost of living is very low. Winter weather can suck. And there are undesirable parts of town, but also an effort to maintain their historic downtown area. Can’t think of any huge drawbacks, really.
I lived there for ten years, basically in the 90s. Haven’t been back since 2007, soooo …
What people said about the zoo, art museum, parks, festival, and fort. It also had–the whole time I lived there–an unusually good philharmonic orchestra. The suburbs are exploding, bringing in higher-end shopping, but as of 2007 the city was in the middle of updating its interstate system to manage the increased traffic.
Fort Wayne natives are clannish. As with any city, there’s an enclave that has lived there for generations, is fiercely proud, and won’t let you in. Fortunately there’s also a large population of non-natives who, like you, are looking for new friends and something to do on the weekends. What is there to do? Shop. Eat. See movies.
2 hours to Indianapolis, more like 3 to Chicago. It’s possible to take a train, but you need a car to get to the station. It’s within striking distance of the Lake Michigan shore, including Dunes State Park (a very creditable sandy beach with, yes, enormous sand dunes) and the southern Michigan stuff.
I don’t think the religious presence is bigger than in any other Midwestern city. There are a lot of Lutherans and a lot of Catholics.
