What are we missing about the Huntsville area? (Birmingham, Montgomery: rent, how much)

[midwestmover740]

Originally Posted by dwhisent

I have to agree with you about where you chose to settle. Meridianville has only just recently started seeing some expansion. You would have probably been happier in Madison or Harvest/Monrovia area, where things are more convenient, especially with Clift Farms, Bridge Street, Midcity, Town Madison opening up. I have lived in both the Harvest area and now just east of Athens, and I find anywhere I want to go eat is very convenient. Meridianville is getting some growth lately, but I don't know that it will ever get the kinds of things you are looking for.
We aren't hockey fans. UAH has some good basketball. But we are mainly football fans, and for that you will have to go to Tuscaloosa or Auburn, although I think if you can get into USFL/XFL, tickets for Birmingham are pretty plentiful and inexpensive (Go Stallions!)

My husband and I looked at Harvest but ended up going where we are now. Monrovia, we never heard of until after we got here. Meridianville appealed to us, at the time, because we both work on the northern side of Huntsville and it seemed like Meridianville was a pretty direct commute north of the city. That part has proven true, though I wish we were a little closer to our jobs than 25-30 minutes both ways.

We had watched this video about Meridianville and Hazel Green and it seemed like an up-and-coming area with a lot of growth, something this story from WAAY also talked about. So that sounded pretty exciting.

There's certainly a ton of new houses in Meridianville and Hazel Green, and more being built, but it's still much more rural than we thought and it seems like most of the new business development has been fast food restaurants. I don't get why one stretch in Hazel Green has a Culvers, Wendys and Whataburger, and they've all gone up in the last year. Why not build some good sit-down/non fast food restaurants?

The biggest things that part of Madison County are lacking - in my opinion - are a good movie theater, some sit-down restaurants that are not fast food, and good retail along the lines of Bridge Street or Park Place. It also seems ripe for something like an Ace Hardware, there's really no hardware stores up that way with Lowes and Home Depot both in Huntsville.

With what we know now, I agree that Harvest, Monrovia or Madison probably would put us in a better spot geographically.

What do you think the future holds for Meridianville and Hazel Green? You'd think some better stuff would move in there with all the new houses getting built.

[y8tiger]

Originally Posted by midwestmover740

The facility is approaching 50 years old, and I agree with all the growth in the area plus the age of existing arena merits talks of building a new one.

From the Anniversary Posts in Huntsville Revisited last week, VBC looks completely different than it did 50 years ago. It has been completely renovated since then.

Hazel Green, Meridianville, and New Market are growing like wildfire. The Northern Bypass project is really going to open up access even more. It won't be too long unto those areas start catching up to Harvest, Madison, and Monrovia areas.

Seeing how the new Ace on Hwy 53 in Harvest is fairing, I suspect another one will open in your area sooner or later.

[tn_native]

Originally Posted by y8tiger

From the Anniversary Posts in Huntsville Revisited last week, VBC looks completely different than it did 50 years ago. It has been completely renovated since then.

Hazel Green, Meridianville, and New Market are growing like wildfire. The Northern Bypass project is really going to open up access even more. It won't be too long unto those areas start catching up to Harvest, Madison, and Monrovia areas.

Seeing how the new Ace on Hwy 53 in Harvest is fairing, I suspect another one will open in your area sooner or later.

There's already an Ace on 231/431 north of Hazel Green. West side of the road, past Carriger and Wall Dr.

[midwestmover740]

Originally Posted by tn_native

There's already an Ace on 231/431 north of Hazel Green. West side of the road, past Carriger and Wall Dr.

I thought that specific Ace was geared towards business/construction customers (it's called a building supply store) as opposed to your regular folk. Its also not open past 4 pm.

[cooldiver]

Originally Posted by midwestmover740

VBC may be a little small for the area now but to me, the bigger issue with the facility is the seating layout and how about 90% of the seats in the place are in the upper bowl, which is also very steep. The facility is approaching 50 years old, and I agree with all the growth in the area plus the age of existing arena merits talks of building a new one. VBC definitely wasn't designed for hockey either. The city keeps putting money into it, so I don't know how realistic it is to expect something anytime soon.

In places I've lived before, I've had lots of teams whose games were well-attended but the difference is they all had bigger and better facilities that didn't make getting a lower-level seat just about impossible.

This is harsh, but folks are trying to help you and you are not accepting any of it. Please keep in mind that this forum mostly consists of folks who really like the area and what it has to offer. Those folks want to help newcomers, but they recognize this area is not for everybody. And it is seemingly not for you.

You will not find the activities and amenities of a 1.4 million person metro area in an area of roughly half a million. It doesn't help that you decided to live well away from the more populated parts of this area. There are lots and lots of sit down restaurants in Madison County. But they are mostly in the more densely populated areas, and not in Meridianville. Especially in the post COVID era where restaurants are struggling to retain their staff.

Your posts read that there isn't really anything much that you like about this area. And that's fine, perhaps you are more big city folks than maybe you want to admit!

It's time to realize that moving here has failed, and start planning to move. I do hope it will work out better for you.

[Tennhioland]

Originally Posted by midwestmover740

3) The lack of good concerts. The places we've lived before all have downtown arenas that seat 17-18K, far beyond what the VBC holds. Consequently, those arenas get much bigger acts than what we've seen here. I've heard some good things about the Orion, so maybe that proves to be a game changer, but there hasn't been one concert that's come through in our few months that we would be interested in.

What kind of music are you interested in? Orion is an amazing venue, about as good as you can get for an outdoor venue anywhere. Mars Music Hall is pretty new and gets some good acts. Tangled String is a great place to catch a band if you can. More venues are on the way.

Visit Lowe Mill if you haven't. Keep an eye out for Concerts on the Dock. Spring and Fall usually. Always a good time.

And of course not as convenient as Huntsville, but there is almost no band that doesn't hit Nashville eventually. Even with a big arena, Huntsville would always be 2 hours from Nashville and just over 3 from Atlanta, so not many huge acts would be swinging through. Orion is a much better experience than an arena anyway.

[clevergirl67]

Originally Posted by cooldiver

You will not find the activities and amenities of a 1.4 million person metro area in an area of roughly half a million. It doesn't help that you decided to live well away from the more populated parts of this area. There are lots and lots of sit down restaurants in Madison County. But they are mostly in the more densely populated areas, and not in Meridianville.

In addition, all of this could have been researched before moving here.

I moved to HSV from south of ATL and loved it. If it hadn't been for my husband's health declining forcing me to move back to where he trusted his doctors, we would have settled in Athens, even though the drive into work off Wynn Dr would have been pretty long.

I lived in Harvest 15 years ago when there wasn't much. It didn't bother me because I knew I could stay in town after work and go to great restaurants and concerts. The downtown area is great, and the Big Spring Jam 3-day concerts every year drew my kids to drive up and stay with us.

It's a hop, skip, and jump up to Nashville and the mountains of Tennessee, or a few hours drive to the Gulf Shores on the coast.

I would move back in a hot minute if I was offered another position there.

[midwestmover740]

Originally Posted by cooldiver

Your posts read that there isn't really anything much that you like about this area. And that's fine, perhaps you are more big city folks than maybe you want to admit!

It's time to realize that moving here has failed, and start planning to move. I do hope it will work out better for you.

That's not entirely true. We like our rental house, even if geographically it proved to be the wrong fit. We like less traffic than what we had in other places. The winter weather, minus that one horrific week, has pretty pretty good for the most part. We aren't snow people.


There are plusses we have found here, but we do miss a lot of the amenities and events we've had elsewhere, and being close to said amenities.


The purpose of this post was to find out things about the area that we haven't found ourselves, so we could enjoy it more for the time we've had here.


I didn't mean to sound harsh about the VBC but as someone who has seen a lot of arenas over the years, it ranks near the bottom in my experience.

[midwestmover740]

Originally Posted by Tennhioland

What kind of music are you interested in? Orion is an amazing venue, about as good as you can get for an outdoor venue anywhere. Mars Music Hall is pretty new and gets some good acts. Tangled String is a great place to catch a band if you can. More venues are on the way.

Visit Lowe Mill if you haven't. Keep an eye out for Concerts on the Dock. Spring and Fall usually. Always a good time.

And of course not as convenient as Huntsville, but there is almost no band that doesn't hit Nashville eventually. Even with a big arena, Huntsville would always be 2 hours from Nashville and just over 3 from Atlanta, so not many huge acts would be swinging through. Orion is a much better experience than an arena anyway.

Country especially. We saw Luke Combs and Zac Brown in OKC, along with Keith Urban in separate shows. Older stuff like Elton John, who we saw back east, was one of the all-time best shows we've been to. We also do some Christian shows like King & Country.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by dijkstra

Maybe part of it is the timing of when you moved here. Our winter weather puts a damper on activities. It is either too cold, pouring rain or a mixture of the two. There are a lot more things to do during the warmer months.

As for the Havoc Hockey tickets. You are having trouble getting them because they are really popular. They are a good team and fun to watch. If the tickets were easy to get, it would most likely mean it isn't a great experience. It is one of those if no one else wanted to be there and tickets were easy to get, you wouldn't want to be there either kind of things. It could be worse. For example, Alabama football tickets you can be on a waiting list for 10 years to get the far upper level season tickets. It may take you another ten years or more to get down to better seats.

I completely agree with you about the VBC though. There has been a lot of talk about the VBC not being big enough for our population size now. Both long time residents and new comers alike agree on this. We really need a larger arena. It is getting to the point where if Huntsville won't build one, maybe Madison is taking notice and will decide to build one big enough.

As has been mentioned, the Orion Amphitheatre is new and it is very good and will be attracting better and better acts in the upcoming years.

The arena is too small and the footprint is too small (making for steeper seats), but it was built when Madison County had well under half the population it does now. The only solution I can think of is to raze the big UFO-looking building and rebuild from the ground up. Problem there is that we'd be without a halfway large indoor facility for concerts and the like for at least a couple of years. To put things in perspective, Tupelo, MS has an arena with the same capacity and the town only has about 35,000 residents and is relatively stagnant.

The VBC arena does indeed need expanding (probably not possible) or rebuilding. That would also allow for more important events and concerts.