Thoughts about Wyoming area? (Columbus, Cincinnati: cul-de-sac, middle-class, apartment)

[danc8379]

Hello...we will be relocating to Cincinnati in the next couple of months and are looking at various areas to live. I would like to be somewhat close to downtown (where I'll be working) but also in a family friendly neighborhood. (by "somewhat close" I mean less than 15 miles or so) We have a 5 year old son so we definitely want to be in an area with other families and kids around his age. We have looked into Montgomery and Blue Ash and those seem nice. But what about Wyoming? The schools seem to be rated high and the houses seem slightly more affordable than the other areas I mentioned. Thanks for any advice you can provide.

[Hartwell Girl]

There are many threads on here about Wyoming, you will not find many bad things about it. Goyguy will probably be on here soon and add some info better than I can. I live in Hartwell right next to Wyoming and it takes me less than 10 minutes to get downtown and being located right next to I-75, Cross county highway and the norwood lateral, you can almost get anywhere in the City in less than 20 minutes. We have a family member staying with us right now and he is looking for a place to live (he just moved here from Arizona-job transfer) and he loves that he can hop right onto the highway to get him to work quickly every morning. He is looking in this area now too. Good luck with your house hunting.

[jlrosen]

I recomend wyoming over either blue ash or montgomery

[Mike Dunn]

Wyoming is a great neighborhood.......have you considered Anderson on the far east side?

[Doppelganger69]

What are your criteria for a neighborhood? If you want older homes with some style, a sense of community, and top-rated public schools, Wyoming is an excellent choice. If you'd prefer a newer home and a more exurban feel, Blue Ash, Montgomery, and Anderson will do it. You can probably tell my preference . . . . Lots of kids in all the aforementioned areas.

[goyguy]

Originally Posted by Hartwell Girl

There are many threads on here about Wyoming, you will not find many bad things about it. Goyguy will probably be on here soon

Well, whaddaya know!

Yours Truly lived in Wyoming from infancy to age 14, then after three years overseas (thanks, P & G) I returned to finish high school there. My parents have resided there since 1955 with the exception of those years away.

Wyoming has plenty of "unaffordable" houses, lol, but it does have a more eclectic assortment of domiciles than do Blue Ash, Montgomery, Anderson Twp, etc. And there's a lot of property out there selling for under $250k these days too. You can find anything from a cozy brick Cape Cod dwelling to a 1960's brick-downstairs-woodframe-upstairs 4-BR Colonial to a Tudor mini-mansion there. There are also a few small apartment/condo complexes, and some duplex and 4-flat "brick box" rental properties. What's more difficult to come by is anything brand new. A small development off Bonham Rd on the village's northern border, a short dead-end street off Fleming called Chatham Court, and another cul-de-sac off Compton on the southwest fringe of the community are the only exceptions. Some home buyers are going the tear-down route in order to have a place no one lived in before them, but this isn't widespread.

Because old-money WASP families were a major presence in Wyoming for most of the 20th Century, and the public schools are perenially ranked #1 statewide and in the top 100 nationally, there's a perception of preppy snobbery attached. It's far from unfounded. For Wyoming has one of those shopping districts where boutiques outnumber merchants of life's necessities, where overly tanned White women wearing tennis gear and carrying purses that look like picnic baskets mingle with Izod-and-khaki-clad balding White men on their way to or from the golf course. Their offspring, meanwhile, are not seeking babysitting or lawn mowing jobs solely to earn some spending money - they're out to put spin on those classic teenagers' gigs in order to enhance their résumés. But this is far from a complete picture of the village. The schools' excellence combined with the turmoil in Cincinnati's Reading Rd corridor during the late '60s and into the '70s brought about a spike in the Jewish population. Of course, most of the children of those newly-arrived families were raised in such a way as to blend right in to the status quo of competition and achievement, but no longer was the perception of Wyoming as a Protestant enclave accurate. Not that it ever was; there's always been a notable Catholic presence to go with the St James of the Valley church and elementary school, and from the beginning an AA community has been there. More importantly, the northernmost and southernmost sections of town have been and always will be blue-collar and middle-middle-class. Wyoming remains part of that vanishing breed of municipality where cops and schoolteachers can live among the people they serve.

So...with wide-ranging housing stock, schools that can't be beat academically (athletically is another story recently lol), and an ethnically and economically "mixed" population, what's not to like? For me, and also for a fair number of people I grew up with who could afford to live in Wyoming and settle in Finneytown or Forest Park instead, the omnipresent air of preppy snobbishness is the turn-off. Let's face it, though, any suburb or city neighborhood notorious mainly for its affluence is going to have that. It pervades Indian Hill, Mariemont, Terrace Park, and Madeira in the suburbs and Hyde Park and Mt Lookout in the city. Out of all those places I'd pick Wyoming hands down to raise kids in.

[danc8379]

Thanks for all of your input. We will definitely keep Wyoming on our list of communities to look into further.

[HuskerDu]

If you are familiar with Columbus, Ohio, Wyoming is very similar to an area called Bexley.

[goyguy]

Originally Posted by HuskerDu

If you are familiar with Columbus, Ohio, Wyoming is very similar to an area called Bexley.

True dat!
If you're from Chicagoland, think North Shore towns or Barrington; from NYC, Summit or Mendham or Watchung or Ridgewood (NJ), Scarsdale or Great Neck or New Rochelle (NY), Darien or northern Stamford (CT); from Los Angeles, Glendale or maybe Pasadena...

[Linda Pratt]

Goyguy, did your parents trees survive the storm? Unbelievable amount of timber on the ground in Wyoming this week!