How do you feel about St. Charles???

[shunda_henderson]

St. charles county is a great place to live. my husband grew up there. I'm a realtor here with coldwell banker premier so if you need any assistance give me a call.

Originally Posted by Moacyr

Greetings and happy new year!

I am looking at relocating to STL from Durango, CO in the next few months and am trying to decide where to relocate to. I am a flight attendant and only have to go to work once or twice a week so a commute isn't an issue. I am divorced, forty-ish without kids - but I do have two dogs that need a yard. I like the idea of being in the city and don't necessarily want to strand myself in a suburb. BUT, I'm also a cyclist and have gotten used to riding my bike (road) from my front door. I heard St. Charles might be a happy medium.

Any ideas, suggestions would be immensley helpful.
Thank you

[LSLResident]

I've lived in St. C Co. for 10 years. Great palce to live, work and recreate. Home prices continue to climb- or at least stabilize, depending on where you are. Growth is still huge. Wentzville Schools are stressed from growth, but great.

Here's a web site that has some information on the St. Charles County area. St. Charles County W.O.R.L.D.S. It may have some information for you to see what the are is like.

[jaspa]

I have grown up and lived in St. Charles for twenty years now. I think a lot of these messages have been misconstruing descriptions of STC and the surrounding county, and I just wanted to set some things straight from an actual resident's perspective. For starters, St. Charles is the oldest and largest city among several large adjacent cities within a section of St. Charles County known as "the golden triangle." This term refers to the triangle created by Interstate 64/40, Interstate 70, and Highway 94. Within the triangle are St. Charles, St. Peters, O'Fallon, Dardenne Prairie, and other smaller communities such as Lake St. Louis and Cottleville. These independent cities are so close that they really act as one city as a whole.

St. Charles itself is a historic, old community which is very cute and old-fashioned (antique shops, etc.) downtown, but more and more standard suburban as you move away from the heart of the city. Neighborhoods across the golden triangle vary from new white-vinyl small treed mega-neighborhoods (Winghaven along I-40), to massive mansion estates (The Bluffs along the Missouri River), to older neighborhoods with windy streets and old-growth trees and parks interspersed (like Tanglewood along the St.Charles/St. Peters line.)

There are a lot of chain restaurants, and it is seen as one of the Republican strongholds in the STL area, but this is a generalization as well. There ARE plenty of local restaurants (try Stefanina's or Talayna's Pizzas, or Mandarin Garden for Chinese, or El Mariachi for Mexican), shopping malls and locally owned, hip coffehouses (try Picasso's or St. Charles Coffehouse). There is a nightlife as well. Historic Main Street in St. Charles turns into an incredible bar scene with plenty of live music (and no, I don't mean some sort of country saloons) at night when the antique shops close. There's even a full-sized casino (Ameristar), complete with nightclub, fine dining, and a huge game floor.

The commute really isn't as bad as people say with the Page Extension now open, and will be even better when I-64/40 finishes its construction in St. Louis. There's lots of jobs IN the county as well, with major companies like Boeing, MasterCard, Monsanto, Enterprise, Verizon having facilities/headquarters within the county. The schools are great. There's five school districts (St. Charles, Francis Howell, Orchard Farm, Wentzville, and Fort Zumwalt) which total up to eleven public high schools across the county, not including several private schools.

The main point I want to get across is that St. Charles IS an exciting place to live. Many of the negative reviews posted about St. Charles are either from bitter teenage burnouts, or nonresidents of St. Charles County. People from St. Louis County have stereotyped St. Charles as redneck, pick-up driving racists who just want big homes. While I will not deny the existence of this faction (as it exists everywhere), it does not describe the majority of the county at all. In fact, it is not all that different at all to West/South St. Louis Counties at all (and yes, I have experienced living in these areas as well). They are just as suburban as St. Charles. Sorry for the rambling, just needed to put in my two cents.