Walkable areas - PA small to mid sized cities (Philadelphia: real estate, condo)

[Physics Guy]

I'm starting a search for a potential early (slightly) retirement area. We are empty nesters moving back to the US from Korea in 2022. While we currently own a home there is very little keeping us in that area.

____________________
When are you moving? Likely summer 2023 with scouting trips during 2022
Where are you coming from? Suburban Atlanta
Why are you moving? Closer to family, better long term climate, no connection to current location
Where will you be working? Early retirement!
Have you been here yet? I grew up in central PA and Pittsburgh but I haven't done more than travel through the Harrisburg area.

Will you buy or rent? Buy
If buying, are you looking for a house or a condo? How much can you spend? House (townhouse would work), 400k

Are you married or single? Do you have children? Married, grown children
Do you want or need a yard? Some yard would be nice but bigger is not better
Are you keeping a car? Yes but would like someplace that might work with one car
Do you prefer bustling activity or calm and quiet? Both? See more below

What do you want to be closest to? None of these really describe what I am looking for.

Do you want to live with people of a similar age, race, religion or sexual preference or do you prefer a diverse neighborhood? Diverse

Phillies, Pirates or Orioles?
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I'm looking for walkable areas with a mix of restaurants and basic services accessible without a car. Living in Seoul has slightly spoiled me and while I will be happy moving back to a less dense environment I want to avoid car focused suburbs or rural areas. Walkability makes me think of the colonial and pre-Civil War towns but I'm not sure which ones are vibrant or interesting versus falling into decay.

Family is in the Philadelphia, NJ, and Easton area so I am also looking in that direction but there was at least a little thought that it might be possible to get cheaper real estate in the South Central / Harrisburg area.

Any thoughts? Carlisle, York, Mechanicsburg, Lancaster?

[Physics Guy]

This doesn't seem to be getting much traction but I'm going to add one thing that isn't covered very well in the standard questions.

We are both fond of walking in the woods. Hiking makes it sound more serious than we generally feel but perhaps light hiking would be the right idea. Is there any part of the general Harrisburg / South Central PA region that is better for such things or it that more of a drive to the northern half of the state?

[Wells5]

How about Hershey? A bit farther out is Chambersburg, a very nice small town. You can pick up the Appalachian Trail in Duncannon and several other places in the Harrisburg area.


https://www.alltrails.com/us/pennsylvania

[bridge12]

Originally Posted by Physics Guy

This doesn't seem to be getting much traction but I'm going to add one thing that isn't covered very well in the standard questions.

We are both fond of walking in the woods. Hiking makes it sound more serious than we generally feel but perhaps light hiking would be the right idea. Is there any part of the general Harrisburg / South Central PA region that is better for such things or it that more of a drive to the northern half of the state?

If you want to live with one car - Lancaster or Harrisburg. Your money will go a little further - okay REALLY far in Harrisburg. 400K can get you a really beauty. If you want to live somewhere walkable, Harrisburg has plenty of options in midtown or uptown with houses that have small yards. It's going to be more diverse than any of the suburban areas. Plus, Harrisburg has a great walking/biking trail system (Greenbelt) and you're not far at all from plenty of woodsy walks (Wildwood Lake, numerous state parks within close driving distance). The one downside to Harrisburg is many of the houses are going to be rowhouses or twins (not sure if that's what you are interested in). Uptown has more single family houses, but you also want to generally stay closer to the river there.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...51805780_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3...86416479_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3...86466824_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2...6414670_zpid/?

[Physics Guy]

Originally Posted by Wells5

How about Hershey? A bit farther out is Chambersburg, a very nice small town. You can pick up the Appalachian Trail in Duncannon and several other places in the Harrisburg area.

I probably should have included Hershey in my list but I have negative thoughts about it from long ago when I lived in central PA and heard that you could smell the chocolate everywhere in Hershey. Yes chocolate is better then paper mill or hog farms but I'm not sure I want to live somewhere that has a signature smell unless it is pine. I'll put it back on my list.

@Bridge12 - Thanks for the good info. One car isn't a critical issue but we aren't opposed to rowhouses or twins if they have character and we realize that going that route is likely going to limit off street parking especially for two cars.

[North Beach Person]

Carlisle.

[Physics Guy]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

Carlisle.

Could you give me more details? A Redfin search turned up a couple of interesting houses in what it claims are walkable areas but no one talks about Carlisle.

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by Physics Guy

Could you give me more details? A Redfin search turned up a couple of interesting houses in what it claims are walkable areas but no one talks about Carlisle.

https://www.visitpa.com/region/dutch...sle#stq=&stp=1

http://www.carlislepa.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle,_Pennsylvania

One downside to the Carlisle area is that a lot of people from Metro DC have moved there over the past couple decades and have brought the very special pretentiousness of that area to Carlisle with them.

A lot of retirees have relocated to there.

Downtown Carlisle has, or had before Covid so I don't know about now, quite a few smallish restaurants and stores.

You can gather that the main tourism driver would be the car shows.

You will have to get in a car and drive a bit (5 minutes or so) to a grocery store.

I don't know about retiree activities, I'd tend towards waterfowl and pheasant hunting if I lived there, and not senior centers and excursions.

[Physics Guy]

Thanks. I was sort of looking more for information from locals or someone who might be able to give an explanation on why it seems to get less press than other towns in the region. I have looked at the general tourist and Wikipedia info before. Now I'm seeing if I can find things to help me order my list as I plan a scouting trip for this summer.

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

I don't know about retiree activities, I'd tend towards waterfowl and pheasant hunting if I lived there, and not senior centers and excursions.

Looking back I notice that I mentioned retiring but didn't qualify it in my first post. I'm not interested in senior centers either! My water activities would lean more to kayaking or canoeing and my walking in the woods would be without a gun but it is an early retirement. Kids are graduated from college and now we can move where we want instead of basing ourselves specifically near our jobs.

[ki0eh]

I don't check this forum very often but figured I'd offer a few reactions.

I have certainly tried to think of a walkable empty nest location where we could still drive but wouldn't have to.

Middletown is a bit of a sleeper choice. It still has two full chain grocery stores in the sidewalk core area, and still has a city bus to the airport and center city Harrisburg on weekdays and Saturdays (not Sundays). The brand new Amtrak station access faces the town side not the airport or Penn State Harrisburg campus sides and it was built on an old brownfield with tying in the street grid. It is not regarded locally as upscale as Camp Hill, Cumberland Valley second-ring sprawl, Hershey or even Hummelstown. One peculiar aspect of Middletown is much of the land is owned by an old trust, so buying in that area would have you own the house and paying the taxes but also a land rent, and reportedly some banks won't mortgage house purchases in this area. Fairly good highway connections to drive elsewhere.

Hershey does have a few blocks of walkable village core, still a mostly full service grocery Pronio's on a side street in a historically Italian-American section. The city bus runs only weekdays from here and you'd have to drive to a higher fraction of services than in Middletown. Chocolate smell is mostly gone, the old factory closed and mostly demolished (some is now corporate office) ~10 years ago (production moved to a newer more automated factory two miles west, despite its scale many locals don't even realize it's there). A couple blocks of chain restaurants was developed just before covid hit so downtown isn't as vacant as it once was. House prices in the village core have a significant premium mostly due to proximity to the schools that often are rated higher than any in PA outside Philly/Pgh. The empty nester money would go considerably further in Middletown.

Hummelstown borough (the zip covers many square miles of sprawl outside of borough limits) has a stable residential core and more locally owned stores than adjacent Hershey. Unfortunately, as is common to many towns in PA, the highest level of basic shopping that can be walked to is CVS - the Weis chain grocery and nearby shops are beyond sidewalk range in the township and across a stupid set of intersections and cloverleaf (heavily trafficked especially in the Hersheypark season) that isolates the useful commercial area from walking and biking from either Hummelstown or Hershey.

Mechanicsburg borough (again, the zip covers a lot of sprawl) has a lot of walkable residential area and an occasional bus to downtown Harrisburg. John Gross & Co just on the north side (maybe walkable if determined) is a restaurant supplier that is open to public. The shopping you have to drive to within the address area tends to be highest level chain in the 717 (REI, Wegmans; no Apple store though, nearest is in Lancaster). It's a separate school (Mechanicsburg Area, oddly enough) than most Mechanicsburg address sprawl areas that are in the popular Cumberland Valley school.

Newport borough is an outlier that strangely has managed to keep a walkable in-town market and has added a very few other stores in the slightly spruced up square. Watch flood zone here. You have to drive out to the hardware store though and any higher level chain than Tractor Supply is over 30 more like 45 minutes' drive. Plus you can watch the one daily Amtrak train pass by overhead, it doesn't stop between Harrisburg and Lewistown.