Family moving from Boulder to SLC (Sandy, Draper: house, safe neighborhoods, purchase)

[carolyn641]

Family coming to Utah frm Colorado! DH started his new job last week at a company near the airport and is busily looking at areas where we can househunt. ANY advice would be so appreciated, since I've never been to Utah. Our dreamlist for housing since our price range is no higher than 600K:

-great schools for our 9 & 10 year olds
-kids rec activities
-Christian churches in the area, or driving distance (we are not LDS)
-good network of doctors, dentists, pediatricians, vets, etc.
-safe neighborhoods
-Starbucks

We've been looking in the Holladay/Cottonwood area, but have now expanded our search south to include Draper & Sandy. Any advice/opinions, good and bad, would be helpful.

[kaytidid]

Are you near the airport to the north, or to the west? Tooele county has some beautiful homes that you would be able to purchase with that budget. There is acreage in Lakepoint and Erda and Stansbury is a great community with kids. It does not have a Starbucks, but there is a pretty good coffee shop in Tooele, I have heard. I don't drink it, so I am going on word of mouth. That would take about 30 minutes for him to get to work if he is around west of the airport. It is more of a rural/suburban feel.

If you are more north, try Davis County. North Salt Lake is very nice with some beautiful communities and lots of children. It is very suburban and Davis County has some of the better schools in the state.

Sandy and Draper is very family oriented also. I am sure you can find all you are looking for in that area. Draper has a very good private school (Catholic) if you wanted to go that route.

Wherever you settle, there are bound to be some Christian churches within driving distance and rec activities for your kids. Utah is really all about the kids. Generally, you really don't have to worry too much about which neighborhoods are safe neighborhoods...for the most part, they are all pretty safe.

Welcome to Utah. Hope you enjoy it here. I certainly do.

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

You will have a lot of choices in that price range. You can consider the Avenues and the Harvard-Yale area in the city itself. Many non_LDS people with money send their kids to private schools, like Rowland Hall-St. Marks' or the Cathedral School of the Madeline for girls. East High which serves the areas is considered good. And of course, you would be close to downtown and the 9th and 9th area.

The further out in the valley you go, the less diverse it is, unless you go to Daybreak in S. Jordan. That's pretty far out to me but then, I live in Sugar House and anything south of 3300 South is far to me!

[DP525]

You might consider Daybreak, although it is about 15 miles from the airport. We also are non-LDS and came from Colorado and we love it here. It is a new urban community and is similar to but much bigger than the Stapleton neighborhood in Denver, if you are familiar with that. It isn't for everyone but it is very diverse and friendly. There are several small churches around with one non-denominational church holding services in the community center. The developer is also building a multi-purpose church building in the next phase to house the various non-LDS churches around. There is a brand new Catholic school that just opened about a mile away. The local public schools are very good, but a little crowded as most in Utah are. There is also a brand new hospital being built in Riverton, about 2 miles down the road. We have found our doctors, dentists, etc. within a few miles radius of Daybreak.