HELP!!!--We are friendly, upscale, literate, Long Islanders who want to ditch suburbia for the real world-- HELP!!! (Philadelphia: cul-de-sac, middle-class)
Northeastern PennsylvaniaScranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pocono area
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OK you guys-- many of you have been helpful. But now we are at he point where we really have to make a decision. We want out of McMansions vinyl sided paladian windowed "plastic vics". We want the real thing! I am not and will never be a soccer or hockey mom ala Sarah Palin. My kids are very important to me, but so is my life and my work. I do not want to raise my children in sterile shrink rapped suburbs, with chem lawns, black velvet driveways and a weekly homage to Home Depot. This is not me. I am looking for something authentic. We have gone out with real estate brokers for the past five months. Most of them live in the suburbs. They may sell houses in Scranton /Wilkes-Barre and they proudly tell me that their grandparents live in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre in this or that area and it's very nice, yet they don't live there themselves. Let's get some prospective . My husband's family is from Brooklyn and my family is from the Bronx, N.Y. These were nice areas at one time, where children could walk, get ice cream cones, play street games, etc. in safety. So when these women tell me that their grandmothers lived here or there, it means nothing to me. Neighborhoods change over time. What I am trying to do is reclaim a neighborhood as a viable option for middle class people who do not wish to live in suburbia or in other contrived planned communities.
I would like my kids to be able to take a bus, if they want. I would like to see artists on the street, cafes, museums, and street vendors. I am sick of the sterility of the burbs. We really like Scranton- We really like Wilkes-Barre. As academics, we are attracted to towns that have Colleges and Universities. Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre strikes me as a kind of Boston Cambridge deal, but right now a lot less expensive. So---
Where do we go? We are up to being urban pioneers, but we do not want to encounter any truly negative situations. If your idea of a "truly negative" situation is a college student across the street selling pot out of his house, that is not what I'm talking about. I really, really, really want to
get away from the "Home Depot" people and "soccer moms". We are also not looking for everyone to be lily white. As an adopted family, we are multi-cultural and inclusive. We celebrate diversity. We have friends who are married, single, divorced, inter-racial, with children or no children, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. So help us. Where will we be happiest? Are there others whose vision for Scranton Wilkes-Barre is as inclusive and delightful as ours? We want a place to call home.
I think you'll like Wilkes-Barre. It has two colleges in its downtown. It is in the middle of a mass revitalization with alot of things being built up, new restaraunts, a new movie theater ect. It's cheap, blue collar, and diverse. A good mix of races white, black, hispanic. It's a city surrounded by mountains. You could be in downtown W-B, and only 15-20 minutes drive from the woods. Only 2 hours from Manhatten and Philly. Three hours from Atlantic City. I think you'll like it here. Let us know what you think.
If you want a hometown feel, try Tunkhannock. It's not far from WB or Scranton and you will see kids riding their bikes along Tioga Street and other little streets in town! Everybody is friendly and nice too.
The schools are good from what I hear. My kids are all grown up so I can't personally tell you about the schools. I too am from NY and love it here!
OK you guys-- many of you have been helpful. But now we are at he point where we really have to make a decision. We want out of McMansions vinyl sided paladian windowed "plastic vics". We want the real thing! I am not and will never be a soccer or hockey mom ala Sarah Palin. My kids are very important to me, but so is my life and my work. I do not want to raise my children in sterile shrink rapped suburbs, with chem lawns, black velvet driveways and a weekly homage to Home Depot. This is not me. I am looking for something authentic. We have gone out with real estate brokers for the past five months. Most of them live in the suburbs. They may sell houses in Scranton /Wilkes-Barre and they proudly tell me that their grandparents live in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre in this or that area and it's very nice, yet they don't live there themselves. Let's get some prospective . My husband's family is from Brooklyn and my family is from the Bronx, N.Y. These were nice areas at one time, where children could walk, get ice cream cones, play street games, etc. in safety. So when these women tell me that their grandmothers lived here or there, it means nothing to me. Neighborhoods change over time. What I am trying to do is reclaim a neighborhood as a viable option for middle class people who do not wish to live in suburbia or in other contrived planned communities.
I would like my kids to be able to take a bus, if they want. I would like to see artists on the street, cafes, museums, and street vendors. I am sick of the sterility of the burbs. We really like Scranton- We really like Wilkes-Barre. As academics, we are attracted to towns that have Colleges and Universities. Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre strikes me as a kind of Boston Cambridge deal, but right now a lot less expensive. So---
Where do we go? We are up to being urban pioneers, but we do not want to encounter any truly negative situations. If your idea of a "truly negative" situation is a college student across the street selling pot out of his house, that is not what I'm talking about. I really, really, really want to
get away from the "Home Depot" people and "soccer moms". We are also not looking for everyone to be lily white. As an adopted family, we are multi-cultural and inclusive. We celebrate diversity. We have friends who are married, single, divorced, inter-racial, with children or no children, gay, straight, it doesn't matter. So help us. Where will we be happiest? Are there others whose vision for Scranton Wilkes-Barre is as inclusive and delightful as ours? We want a place to call home.
These cities may be a little small for everything you want--not many street vendors or museums--and not terribly academic in feel, you're not going to think you're in Cambridge anywhere here.
In Scranton, I'd recommend you check out The Hill section (east of downtown) and the northern part of Hyde Park (central area of West Side).
The Hill:
+ next to the University of Scranton, so probably the most academic area
+ amazing housing stock
+ great park (nay aug) at the top of the hill
- not very walkable (the hill is steep)
- not many stores or restaurants near the nicer parts (top of the hill)
- dodgey toward the bottom of the hill
Hyde Park:
+ rather diverse (white, black, latino, and my gaydar has been set off a couple times)
+ walkable, with a handful of stores, groceries, and restaurants nearby
+ good housing stock (some good Victorian finds)
+ some good neighborhood schools
- some sketchy blocks-- you'll be able to tell by the condition of the houses
- no big park right in the neighborhood (mcdade park is great, but a short drive away)
hope this helps...
(Edit: just wanted to note that my family and I moved to Hyde Park from NYC earlier this year...)
What you are looking for will most likely be in NJ...Places like Morristown, Bernardsville, Madison....
Madison is nice with a upscale downtown and Fairliegh Dickinson has a campus just up from the downtown... It has good shopping and is close to the city and interstates.. I honestly think your expecting way too much for NEPA and based on what your looking for you will be disappointed without question.
I must concur somewhat with weluvpa. Your vision of both Scranton and Wilkes-Barre is a tad rosier than even my own, and I've been notorious for wearing the rose-colored glasses and drinking the Kool-Aid.
Scranton is getting a new medical school in 2009 (Commonwealth Medical College), and Marywood University, in the northern reaches of the city along the border with the inner suburb of Dunmore, is also opening a new undergraduate and graduate school for architecture next year. Wilkes University in Downtown Wilkes-Barre is opening a new law school. We have the highest concentration of higher educational institutions in our relatively small (pop. 551,000) metro area outside of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately while both of those cities are now successfully retaining a greater and greater percentage of their graduates with each passing year, giving both cities an intellectual vibe, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre have gone from exporting coal to exporting college graduates. If the thousands of students who graduate from local universities and colleges annually decided to stick it out and stay here for a few years, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would rival Pittsburgh or Philadelphia in terms of being a cultural mecca with increasing white-collar opportunity. Unfortunately we're mired in a Catch-22 situation. Not many graduates stay in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after school because local skilled positions pay phenomenally less here than comparable positions in the adjacent BosWash Corridor. Why should they sit and struggle for years in Scranton when they can move to Manhattan and live the trendy urban hipster lifestyle with Broadway, coffee houses, lofts, and a great career ahead of them? I myself am also moving out of the region in 2009 in pursuit of greener economic pastures, as well as for graduate school. At the same time high-quality, high-paying employers won't move to an area where there are not enough college graduates in the local talent pool for them to draw from. What good would it do Google to open up a major installation in Downtown Scranton and offer 50 positions paying $60,000 as systems engineers if 40 of those positions would inevitably be filled through relocations? People in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre haven't quite "caught up" to the rest of the nation in terms of seeing the value in an education. They're still content putting in long hours for low wages while blaming the government for what ails them (in case you hadn't noticed from all of the whining on this forum).
Not even one of my friends is staying in either Scranton or Wilkes-Barre (and I have a great number of friends, just to let that statement sink in). One of the primary reasons I'm moving out is because PA is relatively hostile towards same-sex couples at a time when an increasing number of nearby states are affording us the opportunity to have civil unions (or even marriage). Why stay here and see heterosexual couples being able to kiss in public without anyone batting an eye when if I were to as much as reach for my partner's hand while walking down the street together we'd hear nasty comments and see people covering their children's' eyes? I'm also moving because I want to live in an area where people lean more to the left politically. Some of my very best friends and relatives are right-wingers, and while I love them dearly if I have to hear one more insinuation that Sen. Obama is a "Muslim terrorist," that God needs to have more of a place in this Godless government, that we're doing God's work over in Iraq, or that my partner and I shouldn't be able to engage into a civil union because "God wouldn't want it to be that way" I think I'm going to finally lose my cool and tell off a number of them in a huff. Not a day goes by at my employer where I don't help a customer who lectures me about how "deplorable" it is that our signage is printed in both English and Spanish with some following this with "they should go back where they came from." I just feel as if my brain is trying to ooze out of my head when I'm forced to talk to people like that, and it happens on a MUCH too frequent basis. At times I think Congressman Murtha wasn't too far off with his recent very controversial remarks about rural and suburban Pennsylvanians.
Scranton and Wilkes-Barre will be the thriving liberal, hip, "happening" meccas you, I, and many others envision them to be in perhaps another decade as the seeds of rebirth have already been planted and are now just starting to bear their first fruits in their first harvest (medical school, law school, architectural school, riverfront park, Yankees, downtown mixed-use projects, increasingly rehabilitated urban housing stock, inter modal transportation centers, etc.) If you are firmly committed to moving to NEPA in pursuit of a more down-to-earth version of a hip city, then you can most definitely find what you're looking for in either city, just on a bit of a scaled-back experience from what you apparently portrayed in your original post.
Blip recommended the two closest neighborhoods to what you seek in Scranton quite well, and I agree that the "trendiest" part of the Hill Section also happens to be adjacent to the seediest areas. In a few years I can envision faculty for the upcoming medical college settling themselves in the Lower Hill to be near their campus (whereas the majority of those who teach at the University of Scranton live on cul-de-sacs in South Abington because they are "too good" for the city, but that's for a separate societal rant of mine). As more grad students and professors flock to the Lower Hill, that neighborhood will indeed become a very desirable area for its proximity to hospitals, the colleges, and downtown in general. Right now the worst problems in the Lower Hill are that a number of the grand old homes there have been subdivided into small apartments by NYC slumlords who don't care who inhabits them as long as the rent gets paid. As more of those rental units are reclaimed into single-family dwellings for middle-class families returning to the city, the Lower Hill will assuredly become a better place to call home.
Hyde Park seems to be more family-oriented whereas the Lower Hill is home to a lot of college students, grad students, singles, faculty members, empty-nesters, and professional couples without children. There aren't many children residing in the Lower Hill. Hyde Park, on the other hand, might just have the highest number of young families per capita in the city, perhaps only rivaled by South Side's growing Hispanic population. When I do eventually relocate back to the city once I inevitably become homesick, I'll likely scope out Hyde Park to purchase a fixer-upper in which to raise my family and open my own CPA practice along Main Avenue within walking distance to my home. Hyde Park has a very working-class and down-to-earth atmosphere to it. It is very blue-collar, but the people generally aren't the dumb as a rock blue-collars in parts of rural PA that people like Murtha and Obama have been in hot water with for criticizing. The people of Hyde Park seem to not only know their neighbors but also watch out for them. They hang American flags from front porches, take pride in their small yet tidy front lawns, and will sit on their front porches and say hello to strangers who walk by (I experienced all of this during my photo tour). Around the beginning of the year a well-respected fire fighter from Hyde Park was killed in the line of duty in a tragic accident, and the people of this neighborhood really came together to offer his widow and their son their support, prayers, and comfort. You won't find that sort of "I've got your back, bud" atmosphere in many other cities the size of Scranton, and it's that very same sense of community that will eventually lure me back to the city after my hiatus.
As far as Wilkes-Barre is concerned the neighborhoods have less architectural character than many Scranton neighborhoods do (no offense). The historic district near to Wilkes University is by far my favorite urban residential neighborhood in the entire region. It reminds me of Scranton's Green Ridge neighborhood (but adjacent to downtown) or the Hill Section (only flat and not as shady at night). There aren't many families with children here, but other parts of South Wilkes-Barre, including the Barney Farms subdivision, have plenty of playmates for your child to befriend. Downtown Wilkes-Barre has impressed all of us with its rapid comeback. As recently as the early-2000s under the "regime" of ex-Mayor Tom McGroarty South Main Street was a downtown haven for drug/prostitution activity, street lights were decaying and falling down on top of cars, and most had given up hope on the city ever making a comeback.
Under the past few years of the Tom Leighton administration I have never seen such unparalleled optimism from people all over the Wyoming Valley about all of the good news coming out of Wilkes-Barre in regards to redevelopment. The new riverfront park and amphitheater will be completed by Spring 2009, permitting the 14,000 people employed downtown, the nearly 6,000 downtown college students, and the 3,000 or so residents of the downtown area alike to stroll across River Street to eat lunch overlooking the water, go for a jog, walk their dogs, see a concert, etc. The old Hotel Sterling building on the NE corner of North River & West Market continues to undergo conversion into condos. The Murray Complex and Stegmaier Complex are both undergoing similar transformations into lofts, restaurants, shops, etc., as is the Empire Silk Mill in the adjacent "Heights" neighborhood. A new mixed-use building is also going up on the site of abandoned warehouses across the street from King's College. Newer downtown businesses such as Barnes & Noble, Starbuck's, La Toscana, Dunkin' Donuts, Rodano's, Club Luna, FUSE, Hardware Bar, Bart & Urby's, Jannuzzi's, The Mines, and the new theater all appear to be doing very well, and many more businesses are on the way. By late-2009 Downtown Wilkes-Barre will have quite literally blown Downtown Scranton out of the water in terms of urban redevelopment pace. With that being said the city has also had a history of having a higher crime rate per capita than Scranton, although with all of the violence over the past six months in Scranton it appears as if 2008 might be the first year in a very, very long time that this trend will be bucked (Scranton's leading Wilkes-Barre by homicides this year 4 or 5 to just 1 I believe).
Sorry to get so carried away with information, but even though I'll be leaving here next year I'll always have this place in my heart. You can take the guy out of the valley, but you can't take the valley out of the guy.
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I'm also moving because I want to live in an area where people lean more to the left politically. Some of my very best friends and relatives are right-wingers, and while I love them dearly if I have to hear one more insinuation that Sen. Obama is a "Muslim terrorist," that God needs to have more of a place in this Godless government, that we're doing God's work over in Iraq, or that my partner and I shouldn't be able to engage into a civil union because "God wouldn't want it to be that way" I think I'm going to finally lose my cool and tell off a number of them in a huff. Not a day goes by at my employer where I don't help a customer who lectures me about how "deplorable" it is that our signage is printed in both English and Spanish with some following this with "they should go back where they came from." I just feel as if my brain is trying to ooze out of my head when I'm forced to talk to people like that, and it happens on a MUCH too frequent basis. At times I think Congressman Murtha wasn't too far off with his recent very controversial remarks about rural and suburban Pennsylvanians. 
