Information on the following cities..... (Florence, Independence: house, neighborhoods, public schools)

[ajohnson56]

Ok, so I'm looking into Union?
Independence?
Florence?
Burlington?
Hebron?

Yey, or nay on any of these, and any information would be great...I'm looking for good public schools, great neighborhoods, convienent locations to shopping and restaurants and of course a nice fairly new, built within the last two years. Thanks...

p.s, do any of these cities still have a close nit niegborhoods, where you know your neighbors and the community gets together and gets into the holidays and stuff??

[tomocox]

You are looking primarily at Boone County, KY

Schools: Welcome to the Boone County Schools

Chamber of Commerce: Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce

[stx12499]

Originally Posted by ajohnson56

Ok, so I'm looking into Union?
Independence?
Florence?
Burlington?
Hebron?

Yey, or nay on any of these, and any information would be great...I'm looking for good public schools, great neighborhoods, convienent locations to shopping and restaurants and of course a nice fairly new, built within the last two years. Thanks...

p.s, do any of these cities still have a close nit niegborhoods, where you know your neighbors and the community gets together and gets into the holidays and stuff??

Its almost all new in those areas. The growth is high and the areas have good stores and virtually nothing but strip malls and chains. The planning is extremely poor in some areas, especially in Florence with signage pollution and poorly laid out roads. There is no small town charm in any of those places IMO. Boone County is the fastest growing county in KY, mainly because people continue to flee Cincinnati across the river, but stay in the region due to jobs.

In short...those towns are essentially all one area, and represent edge "sprawlburbia" from a major metro, Cincinnati. Chances are if you are located in a top 40 city by population, the area will look identical to the generic suburbs in your area. Find your strip with the Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Panera, target, Super Walmart, etc, and you will pretty much know what that area looks like.

[northernkentuckyjoe]

Dear AJ56

Im a realtor and the areas you mention are my "backyard". The 4 Boone County areas of Florence, Burlington, Hebron, and Union are, for all practical purposes like the other reply mentioned, are one area. Invariably when I am showing homes to newcomers, we end up seeing homes in all four as essentially they are contiguous to each other. Geographicaly, we're only talking about an area that is 16 miles long (about 4 exits worth on the expressway to put it another way) by 8 miles wide as far as the main built area. The only place I can say that has a unique or charming identity is downtown Burlington, but to refer to it as a downtown is rather misleading. Its just 2 traffic lights with the court house and some older buildings. So, I guess the point I am making is that as far as living choices, well, you don't have to narrow them down at all. You can easily check them all out.

As far as close knit neighborhoods, well, like most newly developed areas as Boone County is, for the most part our "neighborhoods" are the branded, single family home communities that the developers built and defined for us. If asked where they live within Boone County, people are just as likely to reply with the name of their builder built community such as "Hempsteade" or "Peach Grove" or "Oak Brook" as they are to say "Florence, Hebron, Burlington". So which of these communities is close knit? Well, that is something I think that would be hard to check on as that is a social thing and I know from experience that you could find that one or two streets within a certain community that everyone knows each other while a couple of streets over they are complete strangers. I think that this is more a function of they're being more households on the street with children in them as the parents will tend to meet,mingle, and become friends thru their kids playing with each other, having the same teacher at school, kids being on the same soccer team, etc. Basically when my clients mention something along the lines you mentioned, we do the old "Playset" test. We look at how many neighbors have jungle gyms or playsets in their backyard and that gives you an idea of how many households are ones with children. In one case, we borrowed the school directory from a friend and then did a kind of reverse search, going thru it page by page and tallying up how many families with school age children lived on the street of the house they were interested in. Turned out to be what they hoped for.

Well, I could go on and on about schools, convenience, etc and didn't mention Independence (not a big fan of) but for now but I hope this kind of helps you in your thinking.

[cincyUK]

STX hits it on the head... check out Cincy and make sure you like the town if you are moving to these areas b/c they are all a part of it... that not to say the boone county isn't great.... of the 'hoods you mentioned, Florence is the most "suburban" probably, but also sweet (home to Turfway Park if you lake horse racing), with the "strip mall" kind of feel