Pop over to craigslist and under Kansas, choose Manhattan, you'll find lots of info like cost of rentals etc. there. Keep in mind that 66506 is the center of Kansas state so if you don't want to live around partying undergrads, stay outta that zip code.
The college kids go drinking in Aggieville
Welcome to Aggieville! at night but theres a good amount of old folks who'll pop in for nightlife there too. There's a mall
Welcome to Manhattan Town Center, a strip mall with a target on Seth Childs and lots of cultural stuff on the Campus itself..If you get bored, drive less that 1.5 hours to Lawrence, home of KU for good shopping and more cultural stuff.
I love Manhattan. Great place to live.
JC is the home of the Big Red One
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Inf...United_States) so LOTS of military/army grunts that way- also read there are many families, good life that way too but I'm not familiar with JC.