Newtown in St. Charles (Kansas City, St. Louis: for sale, HOA, condos)

[Greenciti]

If you live in Newtown or know someone that does, please give us the lowdown. What are the pros and cons of living in this planned community? How much are the HOA costs? Is it really built on a flood plain? Why is it not creepy? Please inform us outsiders.

[zoomzoom3]

Originally Posted by Greenciti

If you live in Newtown or know someone that does, please give us the lowdown. What are the pros and cons of living in this planned community? How much are the HOA costs? Is it really built on a flood plain? Why is it not creepy? Please inform us outsiders.

Pros:

Nice people there.
Low crime.
Lots of shops, gym, etc. about everything you need is very close by.
New homes.

Cons:

Everything is pretty cookie cutter.
Sort of Stepford-ish.
Homes are overpriced in my opinion.

I have no idea what the HOA dues are. As far as being in a flood plain, the developers there told us it wasn't when we were checking the place out, but I'm skeptical of that. Find the development on Google Earth and look how close it is to the MO river. A flood as bad or worse than 1993 would probably be able to flood that community.

[AJohnston_STL]

Urban sprawl at it's worst, in my opinion. "New urbanism" is not urbanism at all. Check out their website by searching Google and look at the aerial views. It's ridiculous.

[aragx6]

One thing i find interesting is they really push that you can walk to anything like in a real urban neighborhood, but I've been through there 3 times -- two of them on nice days -- and there has been NO ONE walking around.

There's also still A LOT of empty commercial spaces. A lot.

[loki03xlh]

I looked at the pictures (including aerial ones). It is just creepy to me. Kinda like the movie Pleasantville. A "real urban neighborhood" in the middle of a cornfield. No thanks.

[WalnutPark829]

very creepy it reminds me of the truman show, and yes new town is in a flood plain, that whole area was under water in 93'

[photobuff42]

It seems you have to drive forever on a two lane road to get there. My realtor advised me away from it. I bought in Lake St. Louis and really like the area.

[kshe95girl]

that part of the county flooded in '93. My cousin lived close by, we had to boat her out......

[RickMG]

Originally Posted by photobuff42

It seems you have to drive forever on a two lane road to get there. My realtor advised me away from it. I bought in Lake St. Louis and really like the area.

This is pretty good advise. New Town was a good idea and could've been a lot better had the housing crunch not hit as soon as they had the downtown built. Most of New Town has not yet been built, and like mentioned here, a lot of the commercial buildings are not rented (or sold) as there isn't enough population to keep it going.

If you like that type of community, a better area for your money would be the one in Winghaven. You are pretty close to everything and they have the same type of condos available for about the same prices. Winghaven's "downtown" has the same problem of not having the traffic to keep the commercial area busy because they built the downtown off the main drag, but Winghaven itself is in the middle of a great area. They are also going to build a New Town type area on the old Noah's Ark land at the Southeast corner of Hwy. 70 & 5th Street in St. Charles. I think that will be years away.

These type of communities seem like they work much better in other cities than in the St. Louis area. If you've ever been to Zona Rosa in Kansas City you'd see a very successful one.

[anr_black]

I've been there once and thought it was creepy too (apparently, along with everyone else on here!). It's set up like my city neighborhood, only out in the middle of nowhere. If you want "urbanism" why not get the real thing? I also noticed there are lots of exisiting homes for sale, well below what the builders are asking to build new. How would you build up any equity if everyone's underbidding each other to get out??