Moving to KC, need help with neighborhoods (Kansas City, Overland: apartments, insurance)

[Green23]

Hi all,
We're moving to Kansas City and need some insight about what parts of town to look for. We have two young children, elementary school aged. My spouse and I are visiting soon together for the first time and would love your advice!
Our wish list is:

-Not more than 30 min commute to downtown (for work)
-Excellent schools
- Homes with nice yards
-Playgrounds and biking or walking trails nearby
- Lots of young families so our children could have friends in the neighborhood
-Homes < $1 million

It would be an extra bonus if there were cute shops / restaurants to potentially walk to or have a short drive to.

Thank you in advance!

[Okey Dokie]

North of the River, Platte County, Park Hill school District.

[KC_Retiree]

Originally Posted by Green23

Hi all,
We're moving to Kansas City and need some insight about what parts of town to look for. We have two young children, elementary school aged. My spouse and I are visiting soon together for the first time and would love your advice!
Our wish list is:

-Not more than 30 min commute to downtown (for work)
-Excellent schools
- Homes with nice yards
-Playgrounds and biking or walking trails nearby
- Lots of young families so our children could have friends in the neighborhood
-Homes < $1 million

It would be an extra bonus if there were cute shops / restaurants to potentially walk to or have a short drive to.

Thank you in advance!

First of all, not many places in KC have a >30 minute commute to downtown. About the only place you may want to avoid would be south Olathe and Lees Summit which would fit your criteria but probably have some of the longer commutes in KC (I haven't done those commutes recently but probably would not be much in excess of 30 minutes if at all).

I would probably recommend Johnson County Kansas and where you would have a pretty good selection of housing with budgets up to 1 million and generally great schools and pretty a pretty good trail system. Prairie Village would be great for you but so would parts of Overland Park and Leawood. Shawnee and Lenexa are further west and are excellent burbs - probably 25 minutes from downtown depending on traffic. Situate yourself near I-435 in Leawood or Overland Park and it speeds up commutes into the city by taking you to US69/I35 in Kansas or I49 in Missouri.

Johnson County has the nice restaurants and shops that you would like as well. It's the premier suburb in the KC Metro. The closer in suburbs like Fairway, Prairie Village and Mission Hills tend to be expensive while the further out burbs are more affordable.

You would likely get more home for your money in the northland and Lees Summit. The Northland is the portion of KC Missouri along with a few small suburban town north of the Missouri River. Schools are generally good there and it's replete with families but its a patchy area with non-contiguous development that ranges greatly in quality from place to place. Check out Riss Lake and some of the newer subdivisions in Platte County. The northland doesn't generally have the cute shops and restaurants that you are looking for - a little more brutish large scale strip malls prevail.

Another option is Brookside which is just south of the Plaza is a really nice neighborhood in KCMO. It has everything on your list but schools. Public schools probably OK until middle school or high school but few people in Brookside use the school district beyond that. Private schools dominate.

Hope that helps.

[MarketStEl]

I know you said it's a bonus, not a must-have, but cute shops and restaurants within walking distance are found in few places outside KCMo itself.

In JoCo, you'd want to move somewhere near the Prairie Village Shops, where 71st Street and Tomahawk Road cross. It's an early J.C. Nichols shopping center, which means it's not a self-contained mall island in a sea of parking (though it does have ample parking, the parking doesn't cut the shops off from the surrounding streets).

Another possibility is downtown Overland Park (75th to 79th along Santa Fe Drive). There you can see the small town at the nucleus of this edge city.

Parkville in Platte County has a charming but small downtown. North Kansas City's downtown is also nice, and a little bigger than Parkville's, with better dining options. (NKC is a cute industrial suburb just across the river fron Downtown KC; it's a separate city from KC, but most Kansas City schoolkids living in the Northland attend North Kansas City School District public schools.)

In the city, besides Brookside, you would want to look in the neighborhoods surrounding the Country Club Plaza. (Kansas City's urban cliff dwellers live in the high-rise apartments lining 49th Street and Brookside Boulevard across Brush Creek from the Plaza.) Westport, the city's adult playground, is another option, as are Roanoke-Valentine to its north and Hyde Park to its northeast.

[Floorist]

Stay away from the Waldo area. A restaurant just closed there because of crime. His insurance went from $9,000 a year to $22,000 because of 8 burglaries in 2 months. And homeless all over.

[westender]

Another vote for walking distance to the Prairie Village shopping area (known colloquially as "The Village.") A similar option is Westwood, which has shopping both on Rainbow and near Shawnee Misison Parkway.

Basically, you want to be in Johnson County, KS between 49th Street, Roe, 71st Street, and State Line. Some of the blocks in this area are more than $1MM housing, but much of it is closer to 500K.

The commute from this area to downtown KCMO is approximately 20 minutes via Ward Parkway or SM Parkway to Southwest Trafficway (through the Plaza and eventually onto I-35 for a minute or two).

[Floorist]

Originally Posted by Green23

Hi all,
We're moving to Kansas City and need some insight about what parts of town to look for. We have two young children, elementary school aged. My spouse and I are visiting soon together for the first time and would love your advice!
Our wish list is:

-Not more than 30 min commute to downtown (for work)
-Excellent schools
- Homes with nice yards
-Playgrounds and biking or walking trails nearby
- Lots of young families so our children could have friends in the neighborhood
-Homes < $1 million

It would be an extra bonus if there were cute shops / restaurants to potentially walk to or have a short drive to.

Thank you in advance!

Just stay away from KCMO. Much of it is very crime-ridden and unsafe. If you want to stay close to KC, look on the Kansas side. In Missouri you would need to be much farther away, like Blue Springs, and parts of it is not safe.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Floorist

Just stay away from KCMO. Much of it is very crime-ridden and unsafe. If you want to stay close to KC, look on the Kansas side. In Missouri you would need to be much farther away, like Blue Springs, and parts of it is not safe.

I need to jump in here to state that (even though I no longer live there and haven't in nearly 50 years) this statement is grossly exaggerated.

None of the neighborhoods I listed above are unsafe or crime-ridden. Most of the crime-ridden ones are on the side of town I grew up on, East of Troost (you will learn the significance of that street either when you move there or if you enter that phrase or its companion "West of Troost" in a Google search. I will offer you an illustration: I'm Black. I grew up East of Troost but went to school West of it thanks to a mother who wanted me to get the best education she could for me at the time).

And even though (a) the neighborhoods I listed are closer to the crime-ridden ones than anyplace in Johnson County is (b) there are occasional stories about something like violence breaking out on the Plaza, incidents of the latter type remain rare, and most of the crimes are committed against victims who resemble the perpetrators (regardless of race). And that means that both live in the same part of town.

[Okey Dokie]

Originally Posted by Floorist

Just stay away from KCMO. Much of it is very crime-ridden and unsafe. If you want to stay close to KC, look on the Kansas side. In Missouri you would need to be much farther away, like Blue Springs, and parts of it is not safe.

Oh please. Do you realize that a large portion of KCMO is located in Clay and Platte Counties north of the river, and most parts of it are nearly indistinguishable from Johnson County?

[thriftylefty]

There are some good schools in the 64111 Zip code like Lafayette Academy and Lincoln Prep. There are also nice homes in the $400,000-700,00 price range. If you truly want that KCMO experience, need to be where its at, don't want to spend too much of your day in the car, want to be near entertainment and arts, explore down town. What ever people tell you about how bad it is, there is certainly no shortage of people there. Or you can go north but that area IMO is not anymore unique than any comparable part of the country.

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MO/d...17/search.aspx