No KY or Cinci for kids and foodies? (Columbus, Cleveland: houses, best school)

[LiveToEat]

My husband and I are relocating to the greater Cincinnati area and are fortunate that we can live wherever we want, no daily commute required.

Key elements:
1. We both fly a lot, so getting to the airport in 30 minutes or so is key
2. I have children from elementary to high school, so good school districts are super important.
3. I am moving from a "resort" area where restaurants and fabulous shopping abound. I hate to give up the convenience of 10 to 15 great!(not chain) restaurants within a 5 minute drive
4. I need a rather large house, but can afford to spend $500 to $600K on it

Do you all recommend living in Northern Kentucky or Cincinnati with those criteria? I hear that the education in KY is worse because the teachers are paid so much less than OH teachers. Is that fact or fiction?

Would love your feedback..need to do househunting right away!

[WeeMadArthur]

I don't really have much to say regarding whether or not you should live in OH or KY.

Regarding flying frequently, you should know that CVG is the most expensive major airport to fly out of. So if you are flying out of there a lot, I hope you have lots of frequent flier mileage or someone else is paying the bill. If you are looking for cheap flights, CVG is not the airport for you.

Originally Posted by LiveToEat

My husband and I are relocating to the greater Cincinnati area and are fortunate that we can live wherever we want, no daily commute required.

Key elements:
1. We both fly a lot, so getting to the airport in 30 minutes or so is key
2. I have children from elementary to high school, so good school districts are super important.
3. I am moving from a "resort" area where restaurants and fabulous shopping abound. I hate to give up the convenience of 10 to 15 great!(not chain) restaurants within a 5 minute drive
4. I need a rather large house, but can afford to spend $500 to $600K on it

Do you all recommend living in Northern Kentucky or Cincinnati with those criteria? I hear that the education in KY is worse because the teachers are paid so much less than OH teachers. Is that fact or fiction?

Would love your feedback..need to do househunting right away!

[LiveToEat]

Good to know. How long does it take to drive to another airport that is more affordable for flights? It looks like Louisville, Indianapolis or Columbus might be options?

I am platinum with Continental and I know they have a hub in Cleveland.. is that easy/cheap to get to from Cincinnati?

[WeeMadArthur]

Usually if I need a cheap flight I end up flying out of Dayton or Columbus. The Dayton airport is the closest and is fairly cheap. One thing that is annoying is that your flight to/from Dayton often stops in Cincinnati. The same flight can cost $100-$200 more if you fly out of Cincinnati instead of Dayton.

I'm not sure about flying to Cleveland.

Originally Posted by LiveToEat

Good to know. How long does it take to drive to another airport that is more affordable for flights? It looks like Louisville, Indianapolis or Columbus might be options?

I am platinum with Continental and I know they have a hub in Cleveland.. is that easy/cheap to get to from Cincinnati?

[jlrosen]

with a few exceptions, almost all of the great restaurants are within city limits. Cincinnati magazine had a top ten list and 9 of the top 10 were in the city.

[Ohiogirl81]

Louisville, Indy and Columbus are all about a 90-minute drive from Cincinnati. Cleveland is a four-hour drive.

$500,000 houses and fabulous shopping -- not sure what you mean by that; most of the time I think Meijer is fabulous! LOL -- are out of my league. If you want a top school system, though, stay out of Cincinnati unless you want to send your kids to private schools. The Cincinnati school district isn't a complete disaster, but you gotta do a lot of work to get your kids into magnet schools etc.

[Briolat21]

$500,000 houses - won't really get you into Indian Hill, but should do well in Hyde Park. Don't know how large you can get for that in HP, but should be reasonable. Might be borderline affordable for Mt. Adams - but again, may suffer in square footage.

Jungle Jims is the grocery store you may want to frequent - they're in the middle of the burbs (35 minutes from downtown) but a great place for foodies. Other than that, apparently the Hyde Park Biggs (Biggs is a local grocery store chain) has a great selection of other good foodie items. Also there used to be a Wild Oats (now bought by Whole Foods I believe) in HP, or right near it in the Rookwood plaza.

I am a suburbanite, and have chosen to stay a suburbanite - but definitely for the restaurant life you need - I would say the city is your best bet.

I like to eat at interesting, nice places, and we can afford it - but we do it maybe once a week, or once every two weeks max. For that we can live in the 'burbs and drive in. But if you need to be around it more often - you need to be in the city.

Good luck, and welcome to the cincy metro!

[jlrosen]

Findlay market in OTR is a foodie's paradise,

Cincinnati is really cheap so you can get the same square footage for much less

if you have high school age children Walnut hills is the best high school in the area, and I am a St. X grad, which is wrongly considered by many to be the best school in the area. If your kids are artsy SCPA is perfect for them.

for elementary school, the magnet schools of cincy are great. there are no longer racial quotas, so you can get your kids in a bi lingual or montessori school by camping out for one night

for getting to the airport, the 2x bus from downtown cincinnati is an express bus for $1.50 and makes no stops between downtown and the airport, plus you don't have to pay for parking.

If you want Applebees, Chilis and TGI Fridays, I recomend the burbs, but for a real, dynamic area, the city, newport or covington are your best bets.