Granger ,IN - Moving from dublin ,OH (Fort Wayne, South Bend: fit in, 2009)

[nonz]

Hi ,

We are relocating - me , hubby and 2 kids( 4 year and 3 month old!) to Granger,IN from dublin,OH which is a great great suburb of columbus!!! very sad to move!! My husband needs to commute to benton harbor area for his work. We are contesting between staying between St. Joe,MI and Granger ,IN ...we are inclined towards Granger because it seems like a good place to raise family even thought the commute would be long(almost an hour)..We need to rent first before buying so we need couple of suggestions.
1) How are the rentals in granger? Any particular apartment communities which are good..we checked online - summer place etc.How is the safety in the area?
2) What elementary schools are best? Are there any catholic schools in the area?
3)How is the diversity amongst people?
4)How would be the commute to benton harbor area everyday? How is the highway?
5)Any opinion about St.Joe,MI.
Would appreciate any help on this....We are planning ot move in jan 2009

Thanks

[domergurl]

Catholic schools .... lots of Catholic grade schools and 2 catholic high schools. If you google the archdiocese of South Bend/Fort Wayne, you should get a listing of grade schools.

A lot of people commute between St. Joe/BH & Granger/South Bend.

You can use this link to start your search for area/state information.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/india...formation.html

[grmasterb]

When the lake effect snows hit, such a commute would be terrible, I would think. Why not consider St. Joe, MI? It seemed like a nice enough area when I visited.

[nonz]

thanks grmaterb....how was St. joe's? I don't mind relocating there its just that i felt it sounds quite a dull place in terms of shopping/restaurants...if u would compare Granger n St.joe which one would u prefer?

[irish_eyes]

When we relocated here, everyone kept telling us to move to Granger....we passed

Be very careful moving to Granger, this is what we found;

Living in this area you will live near one of these four things, the toll road, the high tension wires that run through Granger, the railroad tracks ( more on that below) or the airport.....you will have to pick the least intrusive thing to your family.

When we thought the Granger might be the place to be, my husband was a little skeptical as everyone is on well AND septic. On the upside, the schools are top notch. Elementary and middle school more than high school. Penn High School has somewhere around 4,000 students so if your child is interested in sports, good luck with that!

I originally thought I wanted to be as far away from the airport as possible. Although it's just a regional airport, there's quite a bit of air traffic around here. It just seemed to me that every time we got out of the realtor's car to view a house, I would hear a train ....whenever I asked someone about it, the would say "oh, you just get used to it." Mid-move there was a story in the paper about the trains that run through Granger and some parts of western South Bend and Mishawaka. There is a main freight train switching station in Elkhart and approximately 50-60 train go through A DAY!!! Yikes!!!

We settled on South Bend, we are about 3/4 mile from Notre Dame. I just randomly decided to try and ended up lucking out getting a job on campus. My commute is 3 minutes, my husbands is 10...HOWEVER right after moving here he had to do quite a bit of traveling. The weather here CAN BE just awful. It snows everyday in January. The Indiana toll road shut down here yesterday morning due to ice/snow.

I know very little about St. Joe Michigan, but think good and hard, that commute will be brutal.

Good luck, I hope this has helped a little.

[claremarie]

We moved to the Granger area about six months ago. We are several miles from the toll road, airport, any train tracks, and high tension wires. I'd rather have city water/sewer than well and septic, but there have been no problems so far, and it's not nearly the hassle we thought it would be. Our neighborhood is, for reasons that escape me, zoned into the South Bend schools, but our kids are in private school so it's irrelevant. The South Bend schools have dismal test scores and graduation rates, and there seems to be a shooting in South Bend several times a week. There are some lovely neighborhoods near Notre Dame, but you can't go far from your house without running into the not-so-nice areas.
There are many Catholic grade schools, but our experience touring them was that (at least compared with the Washington DC area) they were overcrowded and underfunded, with mediocre physical plants. As to diversity, the vast majority of folks you will see here are white, with a sizable (and largely low-income) black population, a growing but still small Hispanic community, and very small numbers of Asians/Indians, most of associated either with ND or one of the medical centers. Cosmopolitan, it is not, but we have never met more genuinely friendly and welcoming people.
One of the nice things about living in this community is escaping the long and brutal commutes of a larger metropolitan area. I would strongly suggest that you try living in or near Benton Harbor for a while (and have your husband try out the Granger commute on a few icy/snowy days in February) before you decide to live in the South Bend area.

[fallingwater]

Benton Harbor is a little rough. I have family that lives around South Haven and my cousin mentions going into Benton quite a bit. You could look at that area but not sure what a commute would be like. A commute from Granger to Benton Harbor, I think, would be a complete nightmare. Hubby and I relocated here from the Detroit area this past summer. I am still floored by all the snow this area gets. It is truly a winter wonderland. I truly understand how back home was the Motorcity. We had several freeways to choose from when getting around, here not so much. Its mostly smaller roads and the busiest areas seem to be around Granger. Especially around the UP mall area where all the shopping is.

Hubby and I are seriously considering a home purchase in Granger and the thought of a septic tank and well was both scary and foreign to us. Hubby and I are city slickers. But Ive read a lot on line and got wonderful advice on here, as well, in regards to how to treat them and use them properly. We are renting a house in Mishawaka by Granger and although its a charming older town with awesome parks, the school system seems a bit lacking. The graduation rate is very low. I have even noticed at my son's elementary school, parent involvement is very low. Penn schools service parts of Mishawaka, Granger and Osceola (that might be misspelled). The boundries are a bit wacky and Im still learning on what parts have what schools. I didnt like the idea of Penn when we first got here cuss the size of the high school will completely amaze you. It looks like a small college. But again, the school system is supposed to be the best in the area. For example on Mishawaka, my son has to complete 4 book reports each quarter. It is a huge part of his grade. His teacher makes it fun and has the children do creative projects to illustrate what the books are about. Out of the 25 kids in my son's class only 5 or 6 kids do the reports. The rest dont bother and on parent teacher night, only a few of us parents showed up to meet the teacher. The average grade in my son's class is between a C- to D. I think that is pretty bad as the "average". So we are thinking Penn would be better in the long run for his education even if we think the school (high school) is too big.


Granger is somewhat rural and then has new subs. When my realtor drove me around Granger we passed a field with wild turkeys! I knew then what a city slicker I was cuss I cant recall ever seeing any wild turkeys before. You can drive by nothing for a while and then all of a sudden there is a large subdivison. You get a lot of house here compared to MI though. Property taxes are very inexpensive compared to Michigan. What hubby and I found is the homes are either really small or very large. We want a house around 1600 square feet and we either find 1200 or 2500. There are a lot of subs right along the toll road and hubby and I looked at a few. It bothered me but the noise is about as much as what I was used to when we lived in the Detroit area. It doesnt seem to depreciate values either as these homes sell pretty quickly even in this dismal market. Those subs are the closest to the shopping and we personally like that. There is a little bit of a time warp in regards to some things here if your used to a larger city. But the people seem very friendly and down to earth. The libraries are awesome but make sure you have 3 pieces of ID cuss they seem pretty strict on letting you join. Stuff like that is what drives me crazy living here. The hoops you have to jump through to get things done. I went thru a lot of drama getting my car plates here. But the BMV has more employees than I have ever seen in a government office.

This website is awesome for finding out info so keep asking as you research more areas. I was on here all the time before we made the move from Detroit. When I finally got here and drove around, the advice I was given was a huge help!

[claremarie]

Originally Posted by fallingwater

The libraries are awesome but make sure you have 3 pieces of ID cuss they seem pretty strict on letting you join. Stuff like that is what drives me crazy living here. The hoops you have to jump through to get things done. I went thru a lot of drama getting my car plates here. But the BMV has more employees than I have ever seen in a government office.

Our experience here has been exactly the opposite -- compared with the DC metro area, getting our Indiana driver's licenses and plates was a breeze. It took under an hour, and every employee was pleasant AND spoke English as a first language. We had the same surreal experience at Home Depot, where the employees actually approach you and ask if you need help, instead of running the other way when they see you coming. They, too, all spoke English and knew the answers to every question we asked.

[fallingwater]

Originally Posted by claremarie

Our experience here has been exactly the opposite -- compared with the DC metro area, getting our Indiana driver's licenses and plates was a breeze. It took under an hour, and every employee was pleasant AND spoke English as a first language. We had the same surreal experience at Home Depot, where the employees actually approach you and ask if you need help, instead of running the other way when they see you coming. They, too, all spoke English and knew the answers to every question we asked.

LOL. Yes, the store employees are very friendly unless you shop at the Mishawaka Walmart. They are nazi's when trying to leave the place. The door greeters are required by the store manager to look at your receipt before leaving the store. I had one lady go thru my long list items, even checking my bags! Target started it as well until people exclaimed " If I want to be treated like this, I will shop at Walmart!" Target promptly stopped the arrangement as they do not want to be compared to walmart. lol. Im glad you had an easy time getting your plates. We know quite a few people that relocated here from out of state and had the same issues as hubby and I ran into. It might be a transfer from MI thing, not sure. But in MI you keep your title. Here, you have to give it to the BMW and they send it to who ever has a lien on the car. In our case, we have a car that has been paid off for years. The car is 13 yrs old and Indiana wanted to send our title to our old finance company. Well they are no longer in business. So unless I let the BMV send my car title off to no wheres land, I had to prove it was paid off. I was lucky that I actually saved my pay off letter from 7 years ago.

[claremarie]

Hmmmm. I shop at the Wal-Mart (the one on Indian Ridge) at least once a week, and the door greeters have never said more than "Have a nice day" as I left. The only time I had to show my receipt was when I purchased a large item that wouldn't fit in a bag.