Blairsville and surrounding areas

[CHIP72]

I lived for a couple years near Blairsville when I went to IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for graduate school and I'd recommend living in Indiana. Indiana is a bigger town (about 15,000 people, with almost 30,000 people in the "metro area") but IMO it is one of the nicest towns in western PA. It is also a regional center of sorts for shopping (indoor mall, a couple of strip malls, including one with a Super WalMart), though the Blairsville area now has its own WalMart. Indiana is about 15 minutes north of Blairsville.

I made my last trip out to western PA about 1 1/2 months ago and drove through Blairsville (and Indiana and Homer City), and I'm not sure I'd recommend Blairsville. The core of the town (sadly) has a number of closed businesses, and though parts of the town look nice, parts of it also look old. Blairsville has about 3500 people (excluding the area outside the borough), so it's small but not really small. One positive of Blairsville relative to Indiana (and for that matter Homer City) is it is a little closer to Pittsburgh, though with Indiana you can take the back route (PA 286) for most of the distance and probably get there just as quickly.

Homer City, as noted above, is between Indiana and Blairsville and IMO is probably a little nicer than Blairsville, but it's not a big difference. Homer City is distinctly smaller than Blairsville however (a little more than half the size) and doesn't have as many things as Blairsville, though it is closer to Indiana.

I don't know as much about the towns south of Blairsville because I've only been in them a small number of times, but Latrobe may be a possibility. Latrobe is bigger than Blairsville but smaller than Indiana, and based on my memory would be kind of similar to Blairsville, both positively and negatively, but on a larger scale. Greensburg is a nice town, a little bigger than Indiana and definitely closer to Pittsburgh, but that's probably further than you want to be from Blairsville. Derry, which I've only been through once or twice about 10 years ago, I believe is a lot like Blairsville, both in terms of what it generally looks like and its size.

I wouldn't recommend Johnstown just because it is relatively far from Blairsville.

Obviously if you are interested in more of a country living, you could live between some of the towns mentioned above. If you like country living, you'd probably like living between these towns or just outside of Blairsville.

[mrpontiac80]

Thanks for all the thoughts guys. Still hoping I get that 2nd interview and have up to another 5 weeks before knowing if I will get it or not.

[huski]

Originally Posted by pinetar10

one thing to keep in mind, blairsville-saltsburg school district is in shambles. lots of fighting between board members. right now, the board is controlled by saltsburg, so they get the money and blairsville suffers. when blairsville has the board majority, its the other way around. lots of people moving out of blairsville because of that.
I did forget about derry/latrobe. They are within 15 minutes of blairsville and are nice areas. derry is more of a small town, while latrobe is a little bigger, but not too big, and greensburg is only 10 minutes or so from latrobe, where you will have a mall and lots of shopping/restaurants. The better school districts in the surrounding blairsville area are: Derry Area, Greater Latrobe, Homer-Center, Indiana Area.
Blairsville isn't all bad and probably not as bad as I made it sound in an earlier message, but if I were moving to that area, blairsville would not be my top choice

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Please think about the the busing the students an addition 12 or 15 miles from Saltsburg to Blairsville,
add an addition 1 hour in the Am plus the 1 hour to the
Pm this adds up to 10 hours per week....33 days.....per school year..this is not money folks,this is time riding a bus