Moving to St. Louis from Northern VA

[MOforthewin]

Originally Posted by newstatic42

Hi there,

Oh hi, another person coming here from NOVA. Welcome! There are lots of folks from east here. I'm curious what all you decided on? Pretty much nothing here will have a commute. 10 miles is 10 minutes here. In Gainesville commuting down 66 or even 28 to get just about anywhere during the morning, afternoon, and sometimes in the middle of the night would be an hour, maybe two.

I'm a born and raised DC native (Fairfax) moved here 5 years ago with my SO. Started in the city for most of this time - because I have never lived inside an actual city so why not, love the culture, entertainment, etc, but could not live with the noise there. Settled in Creve Coeur, it's the closest area to what I'm accustomed to in terms of noise at night (no more night club noise, street racing noises, etc.). You'll notice right away that there's an abundance of familiar here, in terms of shopping, st Louis has a penchant for building 20 or more Walgreens, cvs, and for some reason there's more Panda Expresses here than I've ever seen in my life. There will of course be integrating into whatever social circles you can here..which without having a local high school for them to box you in to.. good luck! but the people here are friendly nonetheless.

Given your budget, you can buy an absolutely amazing house, with yard (which I guess might get you a two bedroom Condo in Manassas), and all that nature has to offer here, in just about any part of the region except for Ladue and Clayton. There is even a couple of LifeTime Fitnesses here, one in Frontenac and the other in Chesterfield.

In terms of Public Schools for Middle & Highschool children, I highly recommend Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Olivette. If you want decent public schools, like we are accustomed to having in Virginia. If you are going the private school route, you can pretty much take your pick of living anywhere, including in the city, if considering the city Lafayette Square is neat, Soulard is neat, some houses in those areas might have somewhat of a yard.

Stl county is good except for North County and the east central parts of Stl county like around Wellston, Pine Lawn, University City that have crime problems.