MI to West/North/East of Atlanta Area - City Suggestions? (Savannah: apartment, to rent)

[chaoticramblings]

Hi all,

I'm a disabled veteran, married and when I plan to move to GA, in two years, all my kids will be out of school and on their own. So, it will just be me and my husband. I'm originally from GA, but I haven't lived there in many years and it really has grown in the area I lived!!

I'm looking for an inexpensive, safe, friendly, fun, culturally diverse neighborhood that is also friendly to pets. We're looking to rent a house with fenced yard (or an apartment/townhouse that allows pets and has nice amenities).

We would like an area outside of Atlanta that has a small town feel, but all the amenities of a successful city.

I'm currently looking at Mableton, Marietta, Douglasville, Smyrna, and Powder Springs because those are areas I'm most familiar with. However, I'd also be interested in the area a bit north and east of Atlanta (have an uncle up near Helen, GA and family in Cobb County area, so we want somewhere in the middle). I'm not familiar with those areas though.

I know that is a lot to ask. But any suggestions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Born 2 Roll]

Since most of your family is in Cobb County and your uncle's residence in Helen is a geographical outlier, it may not be such a bad idea to consider staying near most of your family in Cobb County and just dealing with the traffic on your trips to see your uncle in Helen in the North Georgia Mountains instead of living halfway in-between and dealing with traffic both on trips to visit your uncle in Helen and your family in Cobb County.

Of the five cities that you named, four (Marietta, Douglasville, Smyrna and Powder Springs) have a small town feel with the amenities of a large city/metro.

If you insist on living roughly halfway between your family in Cobb County and your uncle in Helen, then Cumming in Forsyth County with its very-large cluster of shopping and retail amenities would be a good option.

Though, Buford in North Gwinnett County with its popular small-town suburban village area that is home to an artists' colony at the Tannery Row Artists' Colony and a massive cluster of shopping and retail that is even larger than Cumming and is centered around the mega "Mall of Georgia" regional shopping mall (one of the largest regional shopping malls in the Southeastern U.S.) would most likely be an even better option.

The downside to living in either Cumming or Buford would be that the traffic getting to and from seeing your family in Cobb County would be one heck of a challenge.

[chaoticramblings]

Thank you so much for all that information. I'll have to do some more research based on your information. This is very helpful.

On a side note, my daughter is wanting to attend a college of performing arts. Is there such a thing in Atlanta? Is it a good one?

Thank you again!

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by chaoticramblings

Thank you so much for all that information. I'll have to do some more research based on your information. This is very helpful.

On a side note, my daughter is wanting to attend a college of performing arts. Is there such a thing in Atlanta? Is it a good one?

Thank you again!

Unfortunately, there are not really any college-level performing arts programs that really standout in the Atlanta area because when it comes to the performing arts, Atlanta is still very much a satellite city/scene of its more cultured Northeastern peers (Boston, Philly, Chicago and ESPECIALLY, New York).

Because performing arts are not really all that big in Atlanta at the moment (it is a very-small performing arts scene with great potential that needs a great amount of nurturing), it is not at all uncommon for Atlanta kids who want to pursue a career in the performing arts to attend college at institutions in the Northeast where the performing arts and cultural scenes are much bigger and much more established.

But there are a few college-level performing arts programs of note both in the immediate Atlanta area and throughout the greater Southeastern U.S. that you could take a look at.

Kennesaw State University in Cobb County has a Performing Arts program at the KSU Department of Theater and Performance Studies that might be of interest to you.
KSU Department of Theatre and Performance Studies

Georgia Tech has a program called DramaTech Theater, but it is a program that is basically aimed at getting students in engineering, management, architecture and science students more involved in the arts then those students otherwise might be.
DramaTech Theater - About - Home

There's also a Theater program at Georgia State University that offers a concentration in Performance Studies.
Theater — Communication — College of Arts and Sciences — Georgia State University

You could also checkout the Performing Arts program at the Savannah College of Art and Design, but that program seems to be available only at the main campus in Savannah and not at the Atlanta campus.
Performing Arts | SCAD.edu

There's also a Theater and Dance program at Emory University (a university campus with a very-heavy concentration of students from the Northeastern U.S.) which you could look into.
Theater and Dance Department | in Atlanta, Georgia at the Other Department, Emory University

The highly-regarded all-girls university, Agnes Scott College in Decatur also has a Theatre Program that might be worth looking into.
Agnes Scott College - Majors & Minors

Though, despite the Southeastern U.S. as a whole not necessarily being as big into the arts as its Northeastern peers, one school in the Southeastern U.S. that really comes to mind as an EXCELLENT arts school with very high-quality performing arts offerings is the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (formerly the North Carolina School of the Arts) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina which is about a 5-hour drive up Interstate 85 in Central North Carolina.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is one of the most highly-regarded arts schools in the entire Southeastern United States and is most-certainly worth taking a very-close look into:
University of North Carolina School of the Arts