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Tewksbury is a nice town and very much a middle-class town. It has about 28,000 people in it. You can probably find a house for what you want to spend, but it won't be an upscale house. It would be an average house. Tewksbury has no downtown. It is a once rural/farm community that has grown like crazy over the last three decades. Businesses are primarily along one main highway-type road that runs through town (it is, on most parts of it, a single-lane road - so it isn't a super-highway type of thing at all).
Over recent years Tewksbury has added several condo complexes and several more upscale neighborhoods, although most of the town is very "middle" - 4 bedroom garrisons, 3 bedroom capes and ranches, tons of split-entry homes, etc. The average age of residents is apparently about 37.
There's quite a bit of swamp land around, so if you're buying a house you have to watch out for damp basements. There's a state hospital that has a lot of land in East Tewksbury, although much of that land was sold to the town for elderly housing, a park, a youth center, baseball fields, a soccer field (all of which are located on one street). Tewksbury has access to the major highways, 495 and I95/93.
On the whole, it's a nice town. It looks pretty clean (although, of course, if someone walks down the main road they'll see some litter here or there). There was a scare with town water over the last couple of years (perchlorate in it), but that was apparently resolved. The town has a pretty little town center (typical New England look) with a little common, an old fashioned town hall, and the main fire station.
The town has a fairly new, nice, library and a fairly new, big, police station. I may be overlooking one I don't know about, but the town has a Catholic church, a Congregational, a Baptist, and a Methodist church. There are some little strip malls along Main Street, but shopping in town is pretty much done at one of two shopping centers (one has a Market Basket, Staples, Sears Essentials, and a few smaller stores; the other has a Market Basket, Home Goods, and smaller stores (CVS, gift shop, liquor store). There's also a WalMart in town. There are a couple of industrial/professional parks on the edge of town, but for the most part Tewksbury isn't a big "job capital" of the world. It's known as a "bedroom community".
There are no movie theatres, museums, or other cultural sites/acitivites (as far as I know). People generally find those in Boston (or in some cases and to some degree, Lowell, which is the nearest city).
I raised my children in Tewksbury, and I think it's a fine place to raise a family. So, apparently, do a lot of other people. I have two children who were well ahead in development, and I have to say that the schools weren't all that great at meeting their academic needs. (Then again, public schools often are not, no matter where someone lives.) I'd say the public schools are nice, good enough for the most part, but not great. One of my children had a "mysterious learning problem", and I wasn't happy with how the schools handled that. He was a child who had been adopted from infancy and may have had some learning problem, although he showed no signs of the usual. There have been times when I think, because he was my first child, he was too much of a quiet, well behaved, little boy.
A lot of the kids in Tewksbury schools go to college, but, in general, there are schools in more upscale towns, where the kids are a little more refined than many of the kids in Tewksbury schools. I doubt, though, that schools of towns of the income range that Tewksbury tends to have would be any different than the Tewksbury schools.
As with all public school systems, it can depend on the school, itself, rather than just the town's school system. I saw a big difference between the school my two younger children attended and it's principle and teachers and the one my oldest son attended, its principle and teachers. Of course, my kids attended the schools more than a decade ago, and things have changed (both in the schools and in information available to teachers in general).
If my children were starting school today I'd probably let them start in Tewksbury, but the minute I got the drift that their academic needs were being overlooked I'd probably look for another school right away. I don't mean to paint too negative a picture of the schools, though, because many of the children do pretty well academically; and there are a lot of nice aspects in kids' day-to-day school lives. There is a brand new middle school with the latest equipment, and that school is said to be a beautiful school. The elementary schools are all decent looking. My daughter has commented on seeing a difference in kids in towns that a little more upscale than Tewksbury (she says they dress better and are less likely to dress "low class" in secondary school). The same daughter (and others), however, have also said they prefer to do business in Tewksbury rather than the more upscale next-door neighbor, Andover, because many people sense an "attitude" in people like librarians, store people, etc., in Andover that they don't notice in places in Tewksbury.
As with most suburban communities the town is, in many ways, run by the same group of people; but anyone who is interested in getting involved is generally welcomed.
Driving through the town someone's impression may be "lack of character" - because there's only a few historical houses on the main road and then there are just businesses. A sculptor (Mico Kaufman) has provided the town with some sculptures, though, so there's a statue of a native American on Main St. There's also a Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan statue in front of the town hall. There's a cute firemen's muster sculpture at the South Tewksbury fire station, and at the Methodist church there's a sculpture of multi-ethnic children in a reading circle. The road by the state hospital has a stretch of cornfields (which are sometimes pumpkin fields), which gives that part of town a rural atmosphere. There's limited bus service, and good luck finding a taxi.
Driving through town, though, one would probably get the feeling the town is very much aimed at children and elderly people. There's a big Senior Center and many senior housing developments. There are at least ten baseball fields, a few football fields, and at least one soccer field.
I've had experience with my elderly mother and calling the local fire department for emergency ambulances. They were great. They were also great when I had to call for my father's heart attack, but that was over 30 years ago.
These days (with the exception of cultural activities) the town has pretty much anything anyone wants - dancing schools, Little League, music lessons, hair salons, dentists, doctors (but there are other towns that offer yet more choices). Cell phone reception tends to be good, although, I guess, maybe TMobile doesn't do as well as ATT, Spring, and Verizon. The Post Office in town is known for being fast. There are quite a few nice day care facilities in town. There are a few preschools.
The town does a good job of clearing the roads in Winter; although, of course, farthest in dead-end circles and cul de sacs sometimes wait a little longer (but sometimes not).
I guess I'd best describe Tewksbury as a nice town, a clean town, an attractive enough town, a good town to raise children - but not, by any means, an upscale town. Still, the town doesn't have any really horrible neighborhoods/areas either. That's not saying there aren't a couple of houses near the center of town where "iffy" people rent rooms; but, for the most part (and compared to most towns) the town has "regular" people. WalMart draws a lot of people from nearby Lowell, so there's a noticeable difference in the people who shop at WalMart (and the bordering on Lowell shopping plaza, Stadium Plaza) and the Oakdale Mall shopping area (which has mostly "soccer mom types" (and soccer grand-mom types).
In general, people take good care of their property. In general, a lot of businesses are reasonably attractive looking. (There are few little strip malls that could use a face lift - that's for sure.) There are a whole lot of pine trees in town and not a lot of sidewalks. There are lots of very, very, pretty streets and a lot of attractive enough streets. There are a few absolutely strikingly upscale and beautiful streets and a few streets that are kind of mediocre looking. It's a nice enough town that people who have "upscale leanings" can still be reasonably happy, but it's also a town that people who think of themselves as "regular Joe's" will also feel comfortable. (There is, however, a joke that there are a lot of more colored lights at Christmas time in Tewksbury than there are in Andover, which has more white lights. There are, however, plenty of people in Tewksbury who prefer white lights too.)
I'm not a big fan of the water supply because several years ago Tewksbury started to get it's water from the Merrimack River that runs through Lowell. Just tonight on the news there was a thing about how water supplies across the country sometimes have trace amounts of medicines in them, and Tewksbury was mentioned as one of the towns that gets its supply from a source that could eliminate those trace amounts of medications. This is a national problem, though, so Tewksbury isn't the only town. In general, I'm not, however, a fan of getting water from the Merrimack River - but what are you going to do....
If I were looking for a nice town to move to I'd definitely consider Tewksbury. On the other hand, if I were looking for my "dream town" and didn't have to think about income level/housing costs, etc. it certainly wouldn't be Tewksbury.
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What do you know about Tewksbury?
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