Champaign-Urbana Insights...... add your own! (Chicago, Pekin: fit in, cliquey, renters)

[C-U]

Having been a resident of Champaign on and off since 1965, I think I am uniquely qualified to provide insight. I left twice and came back. I have been here continuously for the past 24 years but travel extensively and know a lot about other areas of the US. My comments pertain to Champaign-Urbana outside of campustown which is a whole other world unto itself. C-U is a big small city. While it has many of the amenities and problems of a city, it has a small town mentality. It seems it is always taking one step forward and two steps back. Before knocking it too much, I must say that the quality of life here is the best it has been in the 40+ years I have lived here. I think that most people would agree that the palce has improved unless they really like a small town and its mentality.

The town has a lot to offer. The university is top notch and has all the things you would expect from a large university. Besides the expected academic attractions, the university offers theatre, music, museums, and other attractions that are unrivaled for a town of this size. It is a very affordable place to live. It is a good place to raise kids (more about this later). It is not too large or too small. Traffic nor crime is all that bad but you can have a little of both. It is a diverse and accepting town for all ethnicities and persuasions. If you can find your niche here, you will do fine. The place can become comfortable without you knowing it.

The drawbacks are equally as numerous. I think the biggest problem here is that it seems most of the people are on their way somewhere else. Many people, aside from the true locals, come here anticipating staying a few years at most. Consequently, the grass is always greener someplace else. There is no investment into the community. People can be cliqueish. If you are not associated with the university, it is hard to fit in. Many people come here during their child raising years and see C-U as a good place to start a family. Child raising is a big preocupation of many of the residents here. If you live in the outlying areas and do not have kids, expect to feel left out.

The central cities are a little more hip. Downtown Champaign is finally booming and downtown Urbana is not that far behind. There are many good locally owned restaurants despite the population's penchant for the chains on the north side of town. Nightlife establishments abound. The music scene is great. There is a counterculture scene if that is what you are in to. There are small shops and galleries in both downtown areas. Champaign has a true alternative movie house. Both towns have small dramatic theatres. There is a children's museum and a history museum in Champaign.

If you want more mainstream activities, they are here too. We have virtually every chain store and restaurant known in the US. There are big movie theatres playing the latest blockbuster films. Churches are numerous and many are large. We have a mosque and other non-Christian religious organizations. There is a large YMCA and boys/girls club. The park district offers a lot of choice in activities. Parkland College and other educational organizations offer classes to all.

Sadly, C-U is lacking in physical beauty. We have no mountains or, even, much in the way of hills. The streams and lakes are, generally, far removed and muddy. Corn and bean fields extend for miles and miles beyond the perimeter of the towns. Yet, there is a certain beauty to the fields that I only came to appreciate later in my tenure here. The change of seasons is magnificent although the winters tend to bring the bad without the good aspects of the season. The sunsets are among the best I have ever experienced.

Sounds like C-U is a place of contradictions. It is. I both love it and hate it. I have wanted to leave forever yet have not found a place that I want to be more. I will be leaving soon but will leave with some regrets. I will regret that I have stayed so long and will miss a lot about the place. I know that this is a dead end place for me at this stage of my life. Hopefully it can be what you need it to be........ just don't stay too long.

[Katarina Witt]

That's a pretty good synopsis, especially the part about people constantly on the way to somewhere else. I lived there for 7 years between 1971 and 1980, left and came back, then left for good. I still have a soft spot for the place in my heart, but I would never willingly go back.

Here is what I learned when I left to move to "the big city", in this case Denver. (Mind you, this was 1980, so things may have changed in C-U, but somehow I doubt that it has changed all that much.) It was amazing to be able to go shopping and actually find what you needed, ususally at the first store you went to. It was like Christmas, actually! No more lengthly backorders, or settling for something you didn't really like b/c you knew you'd never find what you were looking for unless you went to Chicago. Mind you, I am no 'mall rat'. I'm talking about auto parts, everything, really!

OK, I'll get ready for the brickbats with this one: Some people in C-U are parochial, they think there are great differences between the liberal intelligentsia in Urbana and the money-grubbing jerks in Champaign, when it all looks the same to me when I return. Urbana is a standard intolerant liberal college town. Champaign has more of the big-city type problems: bigger ghetto, etc. But in reality, it's all a small city in the cornfields.

Health care is better in a big city like Denver. People in C-U sometimes think they have a world-class health care system, but that's just because they don't know what a world-class health care system is. If you have a non-standard, garden variety health problem, it's hard to take care of it in Champaign.

Jobs, particularly in health care and non-university areas, are more plentiful here. It would be hard to support a family there if you weren't on the staff of the U of I, because there's not much else, other than providing goods and services to people who work or study at the U of I.

I do miss the winters. I like the idea that when winter starts, it's there to stay for a while; though the up and down of the temps here offer a relief from the constant cold. I do not miss the summers. I remember talking with my 21 yr daughter this past spring. We were walking around the Univesity of Colorado campus admiring all the flowering trees and bushes. She said she loved spring, after a long (if mild at times) Colorado winter. I said "If you've ever spent a summer in Champaign, you're glad to see fall come".

[blossom4792]

I grew up there in the - um - first half of the 70s. Does anyone know Hessel-Manor? Then we were across from a high school where Ford came to speak. Centennial? Secret Service agents told me to get off of my own lawn, assuming I was just there for the view. It was idyllic to be there as a child. I remember the big skies and the joy of being outdoors. I will always remember it with great happiness.

[Katarina Witt]

Yeah, I like the big skies, too!

[markbrunskill]

I think Champaign is fantastic if you have a good career there. Its limited in career oportunities though

[concretebox]

As of this year I lived in Champaign 11 years, from 1998 to present. I couldn’t want to leave more.

Champaign has been a good (but not great) place for my High School and College years. I, like many others I imagine, desire to move to the greener lawn on the other side of the fence. I would not recommend Champaign to anyone coming from a warmer climate, the winters here are hellishly cold, long, dark and snowy. Of course this could be said of many cities across the Midwest. It’s also a small city, but affordable housing as compared to other larger cities. However, I feel the housing is overpriced for what the city has to offer. Much larger homes (and much better schools) can be had for the same price in nearby Mahomet, IL.

I feel the High School education is well below average in quality. I've lived in other places where all students were considered college-bound. In Champaign it seems their highest goal is to simply push students out the door with a Diploma, and they often fail at that. Those who do graduate are often unprepared for college. The local community college, Parkland is a great source for those such students. I was one. The college prepared me for the "real" college classes I would take later, but I was very upset to learn it would take me much longer (and therefore much more money) to get to that point than others who had a better High School education.

I agree the best, and largest employer in town are the University. There is also Wolfram, Intel, Amdocs, HobbiCo, Solo, Kraft, the City governments, and the county governments. This may also be a great place to begin a career in Law Enforcement, since there are three city police forces, pulse the county forces. Violent crime is very low, so much of the time cops are writing speeding tickets and busting under age parties and low-level drug offenders.

Home prices and neiborhoods very dramatically, from 1/2 million dollar McMansions on the edge of town to slumlord-controlled tenements in minority neiborhoods and near campus.

Entertainment is good, independent and mainstream movies, High School and Community theatre, a thriving local music scene, and small but fun downtown nightlife. Sadly lacking is a local comedy club. There are Art Museums, but they are small and unimpressive. There is no history or science museum. All museums will entertain you for an hour or two, then you have no reason to return ever again.

Local businesses abound offering everything from blue-collar service work to bars and restaurants. There are a few local retail shops, but most retail is dominated by the national chains.

Public transportation is quite good, but with limited service at night and on weekends. It can also be a bit unreliable, and instructions on the web site have told me to wait in an area where the bus simply passed me by before. There is also many taxi services available, but unless you’re downtown or on campus you won’t be able to flag them down. Driving around town is easy, but be prepared for people to ignore red lights and stop signs. The north end of town, where the majority of the national retail shopping is, can have horrifically bad traffic on weekends. Game-days bring out the worst traffic, if you don’t need to go anywhere during a home football or basketball game, then don’t!

Parking on campus is horrible. If you park in the wrong spot, you’re likely to get towed in less than an hour, which means a $80 fee to get your car back.

The Champaign city council is corrupt and in the pocket of local property owners. (Case-in-point: a new downtown parking garage, owned by a private company, is being subsidized by increased parking fees, excessive enforcement and excessive penalties. Downtown meters are enforced until 9pm. That's right, 9pm!) Urbana's city council is almost the opposite, favoring renters over owners. They even (very) quietly passed a city ordinance "forgiving" the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

City parks are a joke. Any postage stamp of land too small to put a house or a parking lot on is called a “park.” There are a few larger ones but they have very little to offer other than grass. There is little or no parking for any of them. There are a few good-size state and county parks within a 90 minute drive. The Shawnee National Forest, a huge federal park with many hills, hiking and biking trails, and multiple campsites is a 3 hour drive away.

I can’t really express well enough how depressing the winters can be. Outdoor activities and festivals are of course put on hold. There are indoor sports complexes, but they are private or for University students only, so be prepared to shell out some serious cash to get some indoor exercise in the winter. Most people spend the winter in they homes or in movie theaters or in bars.

By stark contrast this can be a wonderful city in the spring, summer and fall. Many bars and restaurants have outdoor seating. There is also the Taste of CU, college football, several outdoor concerts, Shakespeare in the Park, the Ebertfest film festival (why people choose to spend the first few days of warm weather in a dark movie theater is beyond me), and hiking, biking, camping and canoeing opportunities in nearby state and county parks.

[WhoaNelly]

I know what it was like to grow up in Urbana, not nearly so much what it's like now, but I must differ with the guy who said it's not a beautiful place. I think it is, especially in the early spring and fall. Of course, Illinois is largely flat as a pancake; it doesn't inspire people who like some real relief in the terrain, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And yes, the farmland around Urbana-Champaign is not especially impressive. It's flat, the roads crisscross it like a checkerboard, and the small farming communities may appear a bit drab or lackluster. I think the country homes between the towns are kind of neat in that they look very much like the homes in town, and parts of Urbana are downright idyllic, to my mind, with the tree-lined brick streets, the old streetlamps, and the beautiful parks. I'm not going to say which park comes to mind, in particular, but it is full of big beautiful trees of several varieties.
The person who said that it is cliquey and that you must be raising a family to feel a part of the scene was probably more or less on the money. There is a strict social order to life there that can really rub you the wrong way, especially if you come from a place that is very different from that. Strangely, I didn't even notice most of it when I was a kid, for the obvious reasons, although I remember facing a real culture shock when our family moved to Los Angeles in the early sixties. Californians aren't impressed with anyone who doesn't come from California, no matter what your previous accomplishments. Of course, you could say the same thing about any place. By the way, my elementary education was at Leal School and I think it was excellent. George Will might agree.
One thing that depresses me is the current phenomenon of elevating Champaign over Urbana by referring to the towns as C-U or Champaign-Urbana. It was Urbana-Champaign when I lived there and I see no reason to change the way I refer to my home town just because everyone else is doing so these days. Of course, I still don't see why we simply must refer to the capital of China as Bejing now instead of Peking, as it was called for decades before the present time. The famous Chinese dinner is still called "Peking Duck," isn't it? Do you go to Bejing and order Peking Duck? Seems rather odd to me. And where do they get Guangzhou from Canton? No doubt there's a nice pc explanation for it all but it's "Newspeak" to me.