Potentially moving from MN to Cincy: Neighborhoods similar to St. Paul's? (Columbus: middle-class, section 8)

[Carguy]

Has anyone here lived in St. Paul, MN? Looking for a similar-feel area with older homes (older than 20 years) with character, in a safe and family-oriented area, preferably close (<15-20 minutes) from a Catholic School and not in converted corn-field land in the middle of nowhere... What would be the neighborhoods you suggest we look at?

Thanks very much in advance!

[SMOKEY3]

Do Yourself A Favor.......stay Where You Are!!!!!!

[Derrick_TheRiskTaker]

And ALL of God's children said....AMEN...AMEN...AMEN

[paintballer1708]

Dont listen to these two. They really have nothing but bad experiences where they live. Sounds like their lives havent been very postive as they look at all the negatives in things. Derrick will be moving to Atlanta soon, and judging by the crime in that city i have no idea what most are getting themselves into moving there.

Cincinnati is doing much better than St. Paul. I was actually in the Twin Cities area about 7 months ago. Minneapolis just took a alarmingly high spike in crime. I would really suggest checking out the areas of Mariemont, Cheviot and Brentwood around Cincinnati. If you need anymore info, just ask.

[asearchforreason]

I'm from Columbus but my mother's family is from Montgomery which has nice older homes with actual trees (imagine that!) and I believe the schools there are still strong. I think you will also find quite a few Catholic schools in Cincinnati though I don't know precisely where they are located.

[jsmill]

You might like Pleasant Ridge. My niece and nephew attended the Nativity School on Ridge Road, and Purcell/Marion HS, and they were very happy at both schools. Also received excellent educations. There are Catholic schools all over Hamilton County; you will many choices from which to pick.

[wastina]

Hi,

I don't know MN, but you might want to check out Glendale, which is a small village to the north of the city. It's a historical village of 750 homes. THere is a Catholic elementary school (St. Gabriel's) which feeds into local Catholic high schools (Moeller and St. Xavier for boys, Mount Notre Dame and St. Ursula/ine for the girls).

Homes are older (with a bit of more recent growth) and have plenty of land around them. There's a really nice feel to the village. Check it out (www.glendaleohio.org) (broken link).

Hope this helps!

[abgil333]

I live in an area I think you would like. I live in Milford. I moved from Greenville, NC to Milford, Ohio ten years ago. Milford is small, but it's growing. It doesn't have the downtown feel at all. Quite the opposite. I live in a sub-division called Shenandoah Trace. I live walking distance to a Catholic School (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton). You don't have to drive far at all to get into the country. We have several nice parks here. Miami Meadows is a very nice park for soccer, baseball, football, walking, fishing and a dog park. In July they put on a big concert with fireworks. Really fun! The schools are rated "excellance". The elementary schools are about 2 years old now. The high school is being added on to right now. The land here in Ohio is very pretty. It's not flat like NC. I love the hills and valleys. I am getting ready to move back to NC and updating my house. I have a bi-level. If you are interested let me know. Or if you have any more questions I would be glad to help answer them! Ann

[goyguy]

Knowing your price range would help to narrow the search. Glendale is "old money" in tone and cost, though it does have some affordable sections. Similar to Glendale, and close by, is my home suburb of Wyoming. St James of the Valley, a K-8 school, is situated there. St Xavier (selective HS for boys), Roger Bacon (open admission, co-ed, and with one of the few water hockey teams anywhere), and Mt Notre Dame (open admission, I think, and girls-only) are all within 15 minutes' drive. Bacon is also right on the bus route downtown from Wyoming. A common sight on weekday mornings along Springfield Pike in Wyoming and on Vine St (same street, different name) in Hartwell is kids in their Bacon jackets at the stops.
Wyoming dates back to 1874; it was named for a valley along the Susquehanna River in NE PA. The state out west got the name later, but Wyoming's teams are called the Cowboys nonetheless. And a chunk of the community which was subdivided in the '60s is nicknamed The Reservation, partly for all its streets with "Western" names like Oregon Trail, Cochise Court, etc. There's still some old money there, but the uber-rich favor Indian Hill these days mostly. An air of entitlement and snobbery exists, but it's not pervasive as some would have you believe. For every Victorian or McMansion there's a ranch house or brick Cape Cod; out of the few rental properties, older brick-box 2- and 4-families counterbalance the more upscale townhouses and the sprawling Heritage building. The less expensive homes tend to be along the streets nearest Cincinnati/Hartwell to the south and Woodlawn to the north. What every street outside The Reservation has in common is lots of mature shade trees, well-kept dwellings, and a better community feel than all too many places in the US today. (The Reservation's exception is the comparative lack of shade.) St James is a large and active congregation, but the area is culturally and religiously mixed. No less than a big Christian Science church stands on Springfield Pike, all four Protestant sects have their own well-attended places of worship, two established AA congregations (Baptist and AME) are in adjacent Lockland, and a Reform temple serves a flock which comprises 25-30% of Wyoming's populace. What you'd definitely notice that's different from the Twin Cities is that the proportion of Southeast Asians is considerably lower in Wyoming and throughout Greater Cincinnati. It's mainly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people who are there too - any Hmong are few and far between. The Hispanic community has mushroomed in size compared to what it'd been before the '80s-90s, but what it'd been before was essentially zero (lol.)
Montgomery is definitely worth a look, particularly if you have girl as well as boy children. Moeller (all-male, and selective - St X is Harvard, Moeller is Yale, by way of comparison) is close at hand, as is the selective all-girl Ursuline Academy. The flip side is that aside from the "Olde Montgomery" downtown all businesses follow the sprawl model. And "X" and the open-admission schools would be a ways away.
The independent city of Cheviot, its neighboring Cincinnati neighborhood called Westwood, and the community south of Westwood known as Price Hill have been the Catholic strongholds of the area for as long as anyone can remember. The open-admission, single-sex Elder and Seton high schools, located next door to each other in Price Hill, are anchors for the area that go back generations. Westwood also contains Mother of Mercy High for girls, and LaSalle (for boys) is in nearby White Oak. Cheviot is historically, and still, a solidly middle-class enclave. Westwood is a conglomeration of upscale Victorian and Tudor houses, Capes, and brick-box buildings along with a large number (some, including me, think too large) of apartment complexes from the '60s and '70s. Price Hill is divided, mainly along political/socioeconomic lines, between east and west with the neighborhood of Covedale in there somewhere (lol - no one can agree on the exact boundaries.) There you'll find more of the seemingly requisite Cape Cods as well as more substantial domiciles and plenty of older wood, stucco, or brick apartment structures. Debate rages over whether any of those three locales, particularly the two within the Cincinnati city limits, should be moved into. Forced relocation of public-housing residents as the city tries to remake neighborhoods near downtown has brought a great deal of trouble and anxiety across the viaducts. Crime and instability have skyrocketed in once-quiet places; rambling old homes are demolished, or divvied up into apartments, while the brick boxes and '60s-70s complexes have gone out of style and been opened up to Section 8 tenants. "Good" areas are still readily found, though, and strong community organizations are fighting a pitched battle to halt decay where it exists. Though they're probably blowing smoke, one Westwood group has openly advocated seceding from the city and is moving the proposal forward. My take on all this is to not rule out relocating to one of these West Side communities, but to proceed with all due caution.
Since public schools are obviously not an issue, an affordable and pleasant section of Cincinnati to look into would be Hartwell/Valleydale, the latter being technically unincorporated but perceived by all as part of Hartwell. (Vine St forms the borderline.) Hartwell has had its issues for a half-century or more, as a lot of its middle class migrated into Wyoming and elsewhere when a wave of Appalachians hit the city seeking jobs after WWII. It was also a "sundown town," where no "person of color" dared be seen on the streets after dark outside of the small segregated area east of Wayne Ave. Now we're in the 21st Century, and Hispanic and Black faces are far from uncommonly seen in Hartwell. The hard-core racist Whites have departed or quieted down, and a tangible middle-class revival is going on as big Victorians around Galbraith Rd are getting restored - sometimes from undignified careers as rooming houses. Capes, bungalows, and other "family friendly" dwellings on small lots have stayed well-kept, particularly throughout Valleydale and on the side streets off Vine north of Galbraith. It probably won't be long before the section which has gotten the most dilapidated - west of Vine St, southward from the big Kroger supermarket - starts to turn around too, if the marked improvement in the sector between Galbraith and Wayne and the railroad tracks is any indication. You'd pay a good bit less for a house in Hartwell than for a comparable one in Wyoming, Glendale, Montgomery, etc, and why shell out a higher home price and property taxes if the cause of that is funding schools your children won't use?
There are also desirable neighborhoods and communities in Northern Kentucky, such as Ft Mitchell + Erlanger + sections of Newport or Covington and more. The best-regarded parochial high schools on that side of the river are in Covington and Newport, but many kids go to X or Moeller or Ursuline if they pass the entrance exam. I'll leave the exhaustive descriptions of NKY to those who know it better.