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(Posting this twice..in both forums...just wanted to let you know):
We really like both places, jobs are easily relocatable(job transfer) in both places. So leaving without a job isnt a problem. Would love to hear to the good, the bad and the ugly from people who have compared the two areas..why they chose one over the other.
We are leaning towards gwinnett or the buckhead area or even alpharetta.
As far as Charlotte goes is it ballantyne? Really the safer parts, subdivisions is what we are going for...I like to garden, spend time outdoors and would like the kids to actually have KIDS to play with instead of like where we are right now where kids are on 2 acres of property and you have to drive out and schedule playdates. (
We are slightly leaning towards atlanta...it just seems a tad more cosmpolitan, but we are worried about what we read with regards to the rodents and critters. (flying roaches all over the place and the kids cannot play in the backyards because of fire ants). I camed armed and ready when we were in buckhead.
But I didnt observe any of the things I managed to read. If we are buying in a new subdivision...will we really have a massive bug problem? Do kids play outside on the grass because of the ants.
I thought the critter and creature problem was more for south carolina?
Anyone who has experiences of thoughts on charlotte and atlanta...I would love to hear.
Just read that Charolotte won best place to live...so whats the deal folks....I am not looking for the promised land..but a great place to raise kids (enjoy some old fashioned things like gardening, playing, picnicing ---what a concept right?---and not feel like we are in a rat race all the time. I am from the southwest and dh is from the northeast..and we are in the carolinas 2-3 times a year and have been for a couple of years..so we have been scouting the area pretty well!
ummm. We have more water, less professional sports, less traffic (not much though) and the spelling is different in our names.
On a serious note, Charlotte is the ONLY area in America with increasing property values. Charlotte is a very clean and newer looking city. My personal opinion is this is a great place for kids.
The neat thing about Charlotte is that it is a very family oriented region. And if you want to enjoy ATL . . . it is just a few hours away. So I prefer living in CLT and visiting ATL. I honestly don't know how to do a valid comparison as for me, either a place hits you as the right place to live - or it doesn't. ATL has many beautiful 'burbs . . . I love Buckhead and the shopping and restaurants, but I also have great shopping here . . . so - for me - it would just depend on where my career took me. I am sure I could find a great lifestyle either place.
As for "critters" - I am the wrong person to ask. To me, bugs and such as easily handled w/ bug spray when I go outdoors and exterminators for indoors . . . I have never noticed bugs. When I lived in Kansas City, the big concern was termites and ants so I guess anywhere you go - you have something to contend with. The only thing that would freak me out is a scorpion and we don't have those here. Well, a rattlesnake, but again - you would have to really be hunting for a timber rattler to find one here.
Of course you are going to get biased answers in either forum, but I guess that is what you want to hear. I have lived in Charlotte for almost 3 years now and really like it here. It's clean, modern, and growing fast. I personally think you will find the lifestyle close between Charlotte and Atlanta, with the obvious exceptions such as the cosmopolitan feel you mentioned. Charlotte is getting there, but still has a way to go. Atlanta metro is alot bigger, so obviously you will have many more choices on areas to live. Atlanta tends to be faster-paced and crowded. To me, Charlotte is just the right size. Not too big, not too small. Good luck with whatever you decide and make sure if you decide on ATL that you will visit CLT often......
I moved down here from NJ/NY after a ton of research and the results showed that Charlotte was more family friendly whereas Atlanta was more of a City. If we were in our twenties, we would have chose Atlanta, but look at the crime rate statistics. We looked at the growth potential from an economic standpoint and thought that Atlanta was closer to its peak than Charlotte was. Meaning that if we moved to Charlotte, we would be getting in on the ground floor of something wonderful like a venture just about to explode.
Well. it looks like our research paid off. We moved here 4 years ago and Charlotte has been creeping up the best cities lists all over the country. I think we still haven't reached our potential though.
It's not all roses though, there are growing pains. The infrastructures in place are having a hard time dealing with the growth and things aren't perfect like the school system, roads, religious & athletic organizations, etc... But we've gotten involved and lent a hand when we could rather than sat back and complained and that makes a world of difference with the quality of life.
Have you actually visited both cities? I think that's going to break the tie for you. Atlanta seemed runned down and dingy to us, where Charlotte looked beautiful. As for the Ballantyne area, I think it's overrated. I personally prefer the Park Sharon area (Cameron Wood Neighborhood).
I think it boils down to a quality of life issue. Atlanta is bigger, faster, more exciting, ect, if that's what you need but when I stayed there for several weekss recently I could not stand the amount of time it took in traffic to get anywhere. The city also feels very fragmented and disjointed to me, unlike it was the first time I lived there in 1985. I think Charlotte is sort of like Atlanta was back in '85. Atlanta, being a much bigger metro does though have a lot more "nice suburbs" but the commute to the city is a killer.
We LOVE living in the ballantyne area. Couldn't be happier and we lived in Atlanta for one year and couldn't wait to get out. Just felt so crowded and a bit dirty. But we still like to visit ATL.
I lived in Charlotte for 6 years (before kids) and then moved to Alpharetta (just North of Atlanta) and lived there for five years. Now we have been back in Charlotte for a year. We had to move back for work reasons. I loved Charlotte before moving to Alpharetta, but after experiencing Alpharetta I would love to move back if I could. I have two kids ages 3 and 6. Alpharetta was rated in the top 10 kid friendly cities. TONS for kids to do. We had5 hair cut salons just for kids within 10 minutes of our house. The Macy's department store even had a stay and play inside where you could leave your kids in a secure place with tons of toys. They would give you a beeper and send you off to shop for two hours free of charge. Most all neighborhoods had swim and tennis and many homes have basements as there are more hills there. Lots of parks and fantastic shopping. Yes traffic would be horrible if you had to commute to Atlanta for work, but if you were lucky enough to live and work in or near Alpharetta there wasn't much problem in that area. Even if you sat in a little rush hour traffic, everything was so conveniently located it didn't really matter. We have run up the mileage on our cars like crazy since coming back to Charlotte. I feel like all I do is drive here to get to shopping and restaurants. Also, the schools were great in Alpharetta. Very new and without trailers. Even the people that could afford private school rarely sent their kids there as the public system was so great. There weren't any bad parts of town to drive thru that I saw and I felt MUCH safer living there. I have a major roach phobia and never had an issue with those. Maybe I saw 4 or 5 in the 5 years I was there. No red ant issue either. TONS of kids living there too. A very young city with neighborhoods full of kids! I just can't say enough great things about it. Can I move back with you??? hee hee In my eyes it is the promise land.
Charlotte can sometimes feel too family friendly. Atleast in Atlanta you have family friendly areas but there are also a lot of areas for single/younger people. Atlanta also has more "energy".
We lived in Marietta for a bit, which is somewhat similar to Alpharetta. What you will find when you live outside the loop in the Atlanta suburbs is that traffic is crippling. Rush hour lasts about five hours in the morning and five hours in the evening. It will take you 20 minutes to get to the supermarket which is located less than a mile away. People in Charlotte complain about the traffic here, but they have NO idea what it feels like to be more or less trapped in their homes the majority of the time.
As for bugs, I never saw a fire ant until I moved to my current home in Gaston county (about 20 minutes west of Charlotte uptown). Not sure where you heard about the critter and creature problem in ATL, but I never experienced that problem there.
Atlanta has a bit more to do in town than Charlotte, but Charlotte is catching up. Charlotte, to me, has more distinct neighborhoods than Atlanta has, and the uptown here is FAR cleaner and safer than downtown Atlanta. You also have a shorter drive to both the beach and the mountains living in Charlotte than you would in Atlanta.
Best thing you can do is visit both cities, but take my advice and make sure you get a taste of traffic in Atlanta before making up your mind. That was our number one reason for getting out of there, and believe me, our lives are much better now.
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I LOVED Alpharetta
