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[JamesinFW]

Originally Posted by christina0001

I'm another one interested in Fort Wayne. Mind if I ask a couple of questions?
1. Are tornados a real threat, or an occasional nuisance?
2. Do you know if the schools in the area are decent?
3. What suburbs around Fort Wayne might you recommend for a young family to consider?

1. Tornados are what they are... they aren't a huge threat here. I've seen one touch down within the past 7 years, and that hit the Outback steakhouse up off Clinton and Coliseum then died off.
2. Schools, well I went to New Haven High school. Northrup is a good school, it's up north off Coldwater road. All in all though, I'd say Fort Waynes community schools are very decent.
3. Suburbs; Anything up on the north end (st joe ctr, wash ctr, dupont road) are very nice places. The "rich" side of town is southwest off illinois/Jefferson(IN 14/ US 24 respectively).

[CindyM]

Originally Posted by JamesinFW

1. Tornados are what they are... they aren't a huge threat here. I've seen one touch down within the past 7 years, and that hit the Outback steakhouse up off Clinton and Coliseum then died off.
2. Schools, well I went to New Haven High school. Northrup is a good school, it's up north off Coldwater road. All in all though, I'd say Fort Waynes community schools are very decent.
3. Suburbs; Anything up on the north end (st joe ctr, wash ctr, dupont road) are very nice places. The "rich" side of town is southwest off illinois/Jefferson(IN 14/ US 24 respectively).

The "rich" side, huh? What factors determine that ranking?

I grew up on the SE side. Left there in '71. It was still a nice area then. Things changed over the course of the next 25 years. We finally got my mom out of there in '99 and bought her a new villaminium off the Illinois Road. Couldn't believe the quality and reasonable price. Shopping is incredibly convenient in that part of town and visits home are a pure pleasure now. I still like to shop the Warsaw St. Farmers' Market though. Brings back memories every time.

[mbuszu]

Great information in this thread thus far. I've been here in Fort Wayne for 6 years myself and I really like it. To avoid duplication I'll advise you to see the other "moving to Fort Wayne" thread posted just a couple months ago which is still near the top of the thread-list for Indiana.

To add value I'll tell you that the winters here are very mild in comparison to what I used to have in Buffalo and overall comparable to what I had in NYC before moving here - a few inches of snow and some cold obviously... but as with this year the winter/snowy weather seems to trend towards Jan-Feb only followed by usually 7-8 months of very nice weather (of course opinions on this will vary, but I really feel like the moderate weather Fort Wayne has for the non-winter months is generally awesome and enables outdoor fun most of the rest of the year).

Tornado threat-wise... really a coincidence but I lived in Edmond Oklahoma so I do have awareness and experience with tornados (that was near the heart of "Tornado Alley"). I moved here without hearing anything about tornados and honestly other than advisories/warnings which seem to accompany most big thunderstorms as well as stories always mentioning another wiped-out neighborhood in Van Wert Ohio (to the east of Fort Wayne), the threat in Fort Wayne seems very very benign. In fact, my 3rd and 4th generation Fort Wayne friends told me when I first moved here that Fort Wayne was founded on a location where 3 rivers meet and that the Indians which settlers interacted with claimed that provided protection from Tornados because according to their oral history, Tornados will not touch down where three rivers meet. Well of course, Fort Wayne is pretty expansive now, so even if the theory is right the boundaries have probably exceeded the limits of any protected vicinity. I really don't worry about Tornados at all and I'd hope any visitors or new comers wouldn't live in fear because quite frankly, I think you have a better chance getting into a car accident.

Crime-wise this place is safe - very safe. Cannot emphasize enough, the locals are generally good people both the haves and the have-nots. There are literally just couple bad areas which are just a street or two each which anyone in the right mind would stay away from after dark. Every city has these - moving to Fort Wayne I would absolutely not be concerned about crime, we have less than comparable cities - and the suburbs have even less than that.

Road/street-wise (I won't address the recent or ancient past) but today Fort Wayne is extremely easy to get around with a great 2-3 bi-directional highway called the 69 - in combination with Coliseum Boulevard they form a sort of belt-way surrounding the entire city. You can drive through the center via a couple of main arteries going n-s or e-w as well. I don't know where others are from that they would say otherwise on this forum but I've lived in several US major metropolitan areas and across the country... Fort Wayne is unbelievably easy to traverse - and you can cut completely across it in any direction in about 25 min. What they call "heavy traffic" here is a joke... other than perhaps Coliseum Blvd just in front of our large indoor mall called Glenbrook Square on a weekend evening (or anytime during the holidays) you will not see significant congestion. Additionally the roads here are typically in great shape and it seems that the local government slates significant money and time to expanding and maintaining the arteries. The roads are not perfect, but my gosh I've seen worse, a lot worse than Fort Wayne's.

Fort Wayne's beauty... ok now this is something I've seen contested on this and other online locations - as well as I've heard from those that live in Southern Indiana that they don't like Northern Indiana's general flatness and farmland surroundings. Well I wish I could put the issue to rest, but I don't have that influence but here's my opinion... I think this area has its beautiful and not so beautiful parts. In SW area by the county boundaries is some awesome hilly and woody land... otherwise it is generally flat here - we don't have mountains, we don't have the rolling hills of Kentucky, but what can I say... I think there is a sort of green and well-treed and nice beauty here in the non-winter months anyways. We have some great parks, nice golf courses, very large glacier lakes nearby, and if you live in a nice neighborhood, I think you'll be alright for sure. If instead you choose to live next to a factory or quarry or in the midst of farmland (not my thing at least), well then perhaps otherwise.

Overall, I think this area is awesome for raising a family, hence it being my choice after living all over the US. It is affordable, beautiful, safe, has nice weather, and although a bit out of the way if you have family outside of driving distance, I think it would be hard to find someplace that provides comparable value.

[JamesinFW]

Originally Posted by CindyM

The "rich" side, huh? What factors determine that ranking?

I grew up on the SE side. Left there in '71. It was still a nice area then. Things changed over the course of the next 25 years. We finally got my mom out of there in '99 and bought her a new villaminium off the Illinois Road. Couldn't believe the quality and reasonable price. Shopping is incredibly convenient in that part of town and visits home are a pure pleasure now. I still like to shop the Warsaw St. Farmers' Market though. Brings back memories every time.

Well, what determines the rich side is pretty much the property values. Very rarely will you find a 300,000+ dollar home in New Haven, or up north (as of yet, that area is still being built up).

The owner of the NE Indiana area pizza huts has a house off of the west county line road, easily a 3 million+ dollar house. No way would he have built his house up off the north side, new haven, or south side of town.

By rich side, I mean look at the home prices by appraisal and property values of the land on this particular side.

Of course then you have quite a few businesses basing themselves on that side of town, mortgage brokers, banks, larger company home offices.