Greenville Area? (Raleigh, Kinston, Washington: for sale, real estate, violent crime) - Coastal North Carolina - North Carolina (NC) - City-Data Forum

JACKIE27 · 05-01-2010, 07:33 PM

My family is thinking of re-locating to Greenville, NC from NJ because I want to go to ECU for college (currently finishing up my sophomore year in high school.) and we obviously have some questions.

How is the crime in Greenville, NC? Some sites say it is bad, but talked to extremely lovely woman at the visitors center and she said that there is a very small pocket (Memorial Drive Area) that you don't really want to hang around, but it's not that serious and other than that the town is 100% safe, she never hears about any issues.

Is Greenville, NC city-like?

How is the school-system (I would be there Junior and Senior year)?

If you are currently in the area, how is south central high school?

If you are currently in the area, how is the Barrington Fields area?

How is ECU?

If you can answer any of these you will be a HUGE help! We are going to visit on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and I'm pretty excited. But please don't take info off google, I can do that myself, I really need personal experience.

Lithuania · 05-02-2010, 03:56 PM

I tend to agree with the lady at the visitors center...crime is pretty prevalent here but it is mostly in certain areas and if you use common sense you shouldn't have a problem. Don't know much about South Central High School but I am familiar with the neighborhood. Should be a pretty safe area with nice homes. Be forewarned there will be a highway constructed nearby...it's called the US 264 southwest bypass and will go pretty near that area.

I live in Winterville and like it. ECU is a good school and from what I understand most students like going there. From what I see it is very social and there is lots to do.

Lithuania · 05-02-2010, 03:57 PM

Oh, and beaches and several waterways are nearby if your family is into boating.

JACKIE27 · 05-02-2010, 05:11 PM

Were not too into boating but we love the water, and the only water near us is the Jersey Shore, which is disgusting and most people who live by it would never dare go in. The area I live in now is the definition of suburbia, and other than a large drug problem (that seems to be getting much worse over time) there really isn't any crime, but we do have common sense and as long as the entire area isn't so crime ridden that we can't step outside and not be scared then we are fine.

We aren't set on Greenville, but minus the crime everything we read seems to be positive. The highway building also wouldn't be a problem for us, over here they are constantly building and ripping up roads, so it'd be a piece of home lol.

We haven't been able to find any other real towns in the area, minus winterville, which we will be looking at as well. Are there any? We just want to have something fresh and new, preferably a new house, in NC, and with fairly nice people because we are all pretty tired of the fakeness in NJ.

trlhiker · 05-02-2010, 07:42 PM

Don't live there but Winterville is supposed to be a very nice town. I wouldn't live in Greenville mainly because of the traffic. Try not to live too close to any river cause flooding can be an issue.

Lithuania · 05-03-2010, 06:26 AM

The nearest "big" city would be Raleigh. Other than that there aren't any other large towns other than Washington and Kinston that would be a realistic commute to ECU. Both are significantly smaller than Greenville. Winterville is mostly subdivisions with a small downtown. It has a few nice parks though, one recently upgraded.

Most shopping is in Greenville, although the border of Winterville and Greenville basically touch each other.

I was also thinking that the most common out of state license plate I see besides Virginia around here is New Jersey. There are a fair amount of people from NJ who go to ECU, just based on my personal observation.

JACKIE27 · 05-03-2010, 03:20 PM

We actually just found out that Barrington Fields is in Winterville, not Greenville, we were confused due to some conflicting real estate sites. We have no problems driving 10 miles to Greenville to do something if we live in Winterville, my town now has NO culture whatsoever, so even the tiniest bit of culture would be new and fresh for us. Plus the crime seems to be somewhat better in Winterville as well. And shopping in Greenville would be no issue either, as long as we have Target and/or CVS we're good. We'll be in Greenville by 11 tomorrow morning, and I have a really good feeling. Very excited

Richard Martin · 05-04-2010, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JACKIE27

We actually just found out that Barrington Fields is in Winterville, not Greenville, we were confused due to some conflicting real estate sites. We have no problems driving 10 miles to Greenville to do something if we live in Winterville, my town now has NO culture whatsoever, so even the tiniest bit of culture would be new and fresh for us. Plus the crime seems to be somewhat better in Winterville as well. And shopping in Greenville would be no issue either, as long as we have Target and/or CVS we're good. We'll be in Greenville by 11 tomorrow morning, and I have a really good feeling. Very excited

Greenville and Winterville touch one another. You can drive from Winterville into Greenville and never know that you left Winterville if you didn't see a sign. They are really one city now with 2 different govenments.

Greenville had a lot of gas station robberies a couple/few years ago. The Greenville Police, ECU Police and Pitt County Sheriff's Office have been working very hard to reduce the violent crime and it seems to be paying off. The majority of that type of crime seems to be concentrated to the NW parts of the city and north of the Tar River. There are some break ins and stuff like that in other parts of the city but not too much.

The schools here are just so-so. Nothing that really stands out. My grand daughter is in the advanced placement program and the teachers that run it don't seem to want to push her. It's almost like they're wishing she would just get back in the dumb line so they didn't have to deal with the odd ball smart kid that can actually speak English. It's very irritating when your 7 year old grand daughter comes home yacking about barns, youngins and other hick garbage.

Lithuania · 05-04-2010, 06:15 AM

From what I hear the best high school in the area is Rose...there have been several Morehead Scholars from that high school.

JACKIE27 · 05-07-2010, 04:54 AM

Ok, so we got back from Greenville last night and we really, really liked it. We never felt "unsafe" and the houses we looked at were beautiful and affordable. We loved the Barrington Fields house, but there were a lot of overgrown land plots near it, so now we are looking at Taberna and Mill Creek. We would have to build a new house in Taberna, so we will figure out where exactly to live once my dad gets a job. We toured the high school and it seemed very nice and new, very different from my 35+ year old high school I am in now. The academics aren't the most important thing, I won't be spending more than two years there (and senior year is well, senior year) so it isn't a huge deal if the classes aren't top notch. The school seemed safe as well and they seemed to have people under control. I did really like the college as well (wearing my ECU tee today

We were very impressed by the large number of restaurants and shops (thought our area was built up, wow!), and we only met one rude person in the entire 3 days (who was from NY, go figure) but everyone else was so sweet and accomidating. We are putting are house up for sale today, and my dad already has a glimmer of hope as far as a job, so things are looking up. Thank you so much for your help everyone, hope to be your neighbor someday soon.