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So, this is another "we're moving to Tampa, what are the good towns/schools/roads/blah" post. My wife, "babypodof4," is also on the forums here.
Anyway, I may have the opportunity to take a job at Tampa General Hospital this spring, and we are looking around for the best place to move our family of six -- the two of us and our four kids who range from 10 to 4 years old. I'll have an MBA and be working in IT Project management, and my wife is a Registered Dietician, if that's any help -- I'm pretty firmly white-collar.
We currently live in northern Michigan, in a tiny hick-town where there are more trees and cows than people. We don't care about night-life, but we'd like to be reasonably close to restaurants, movie theaters, attractions, etc. I currently drive 20 miles / 35 minutes to work, and am perfectly find with that length commute. We like small-town life, and would like to find a small community to fit into, join the PTO, and so on.
We'd like a 4-bedroom house (condo, townhome, apartment), and we'd like to rent it until we decide if we'll stay for a couple of years or a decade. We are looking at the $1,000 to $1,300 kind of rental range.
We need good schools -- our current school is rated a "5" by greatschools.org, and we love it. My son is borderline autistic -- actually just tested as NOT autistic last month, but it's still a concern that we find a smaller school. I know about the Constitutional class size amendment, but lunches and recess concern me with a bigger school.
I've read the heck out of this forum, and Sperling's Best Places website, and the only common theme seems to be that nobody likes anyplace, anywhere, the comments are about 90% negative for everyplace around Tampa...and for that matter for Seattle, Portland, Albuquerque, Lincoln, NE, Houston, Marquette, MI...everywhere you look, people seem to hate where they live. (sorry, I'll get off my soapbox)
We'd like ocean breezes if we can get them, good schools, small town feel, low crime, half-hour commute to Tampa Gen'l, short drive to beaches, museums, and stuff, reasonable housing prices, and mature trees. We don't ask for much. We're looking at Palm Harbor, Plant City, Sarasota Springs, Pinella County schools, and...well... too much data...we've gone cross-eyed.
If anyone can make any sense of this...could we buy some free advice?
So, this is another "we're moving to Tampa, what are the good towns/schools/roads/blah" post. My wife, "babypodof4," is also on the forums here.
Anyway, I may have the opportunity to take a job at Tampa General Hospital this spring, and we are looking around for the best place to move our family of six -- the two of us and our four kids who range from 10 to 4 years old. I'll have an MBA and be working in IT Project management, and my wife is a Registered Dietician, if that's any help -- I'm pretty firmly white-collar.
We currently live in northern Michigan, in a tiny hick-town where there are more trees and cows than people. We don't care about night-life, but we'd like to be reasonably close to restaurants, movie theaters, attractions, etc. I currently drive 20 miles / 35 minutes to work, and am perfectly find with that length commute. We like small-town life, and would like to find a small community to fit into, join the PTO, and so on.
We'd like a 4-bedroom house (condo, townhome, apartment), and we'd like to rent it until we decide if we'll stay for a couple of years or a decade. We are looking at the $1,000 to $1,300 kind of rental range.
We need good schools -- our current school is rated a "5" by greatschools.org, and we love it. My son is borderline autistic -- actually just tested as NOT autistic last month, but it's still a concern that we find a smaller school. I know about the Constitutional class size amendment, but lunches and recess concern me with a bigger school.
I've read the heck out of this forum, and Sperling's Best Places website, and the only common theme seems to be that nobody likes anyplace, anywhere, the comments are about 90% negative for everyplace around Tampa...and for that matter for Seattle, Portland, Albuquerque, Lincoln, NE, Houston, Marquette, MI...everywhere you look, people seem to hate where they live. (sorry, I'll get off my soapbox)
We'd like ocean breezes if we can get them, good schools, small town feel, low crime, half-hour commute to Tampa Gen'l, short drive to beaches, museums, and stuff, reasonable housing prices, and mature trees. We don't ask for much. We're looking at Palm Harbor, Plant City, Sarasota Springs, Pinella County schools, and...well... too much data...we've gone cross-eyed.
If anyone can make any sense of this...could we buy some free advice?
If you want a half hour commute all of those places are too far. Have you checked out South Tampa? I believe some of the best schools fall in that district, but the downside is the area is expensive. Didn't your wife ask questions about this- I think I remember her posts and people recommended Davis Islands.
If you want to drive an hour (my hubby does every day) I highly recommend Sarasota where I live - small city with big city amenities, some good schools here, a small but great downtown with everything and all close to beautiful beaches. Drive up I-75 is not bad, nothing like the drive over from the Pinellas side. Just a thought.
So, this is another "we're moving to Tampa, what are the good towns/schools/roads/blah" post. My wife, "babypodof4," is also on the forums here.
Anyway, I may have the opportunity to take a job at Tampa General Hospital this spring, and we are looking around for the best place to move our family of six -- the two of us and our four kids who range from 10 to 4 years old. I'll have an MBA and be working in IT Project management, and my wife is a Registered Dietician, if that's any help -- I'm pretty firmly white-collar.
We currently live in northern Michigan, in a tiny hick-town where there are more trees and cows than people. We don't care about night-life, but we'd like to be reasonably close to restaurants, movie theaters, attractions, etc. I currently drive 20 miles / 35 minutes to work, and am perfectly find with that length commute. We like small-town life, and would like to find a small community to fit into, join the PTO, and so on.
We'd like a 4-bedroom house (condo, townhome, apartment), and we'd like to rent it until we decide if we'll stay for a couple of years or a decade. We are looking at the $1,000 to $1,300 kind of rental range.
We need good schools -- our current school is rated a "5" by greatschools.org, and we love it. My son is borderline autistic -- actually just tested as NOT autistic last month, but it's still a concern that we find a smaller school. I know about the Constitutional class size amendment, but lunches and recess concern me with a bigger school.
I've read the heck out of this forum, and Sperling's Best Places website, and the only common theme seems to be that nobody likes anyplace, anywhere, the comments are about 90% negative for everyplace around Tampa...and for that matter for Seattle, Portland, Albuquerque, Lincoln, NE, Houston, Marquette, MI...everywhere you look, people seem to hate where they live. (sorry, I'll get off my soapbox)
We'd like ocean breezes if we can get them, good schools, small town feel, low crime, half-hour commute to Tampa Gen'l, short drive to beaches, museums, and stuff, reasonable housing prices, and mature trees. We don't ask for much. We're looking at Palm Harbor, Plant City, Sarasota Springs, Pinella County schools, and...well... too much data...we've gone cross-eyed.
If anyone can make any sense of this...could we buy some free advice?
The reason everyone talks poorly about the city/town they live in is simply because they have been there for a long time. And because of that they have trouble finding new and fun things to do so it gets a little bit more boring everyday. But That's just something that would happen every where you live. I have lived in Lutz FL (Lutz is next to Tampa on the north side) for 15 years now, and I'll admit that it has gotten pretty boring. But the first 5-6 years here were awesome! There really is a lot of fun things you can here, you just have to look for them.
But like gypsychic said "If you want a half hour commute all of those places are too far." I work for Hillsborough County Fire/Rescue so I'm well familiar with the area. If you don't mind driving 30-60 minutes depend on traffic to work then you and your wife should check out Lutz, and Land-O-Lakes. It's not over populated and hectic as Tampa. There's crime everywhere but in Lutz the crime rate is a lot lower then Tampa. From my house it's about a 30 minute drive to the beach and a 30 minute drive to TGH (Tampa Gen) and there's many many things in between. Malls, movie theaters, comedy clubs, performing arts theaters, Busch Gardens (amazing theme park, one of the best in my opinion), hundreds of restaurants from fast food to 6 stars such at "Burns Steak House" they have a $400.00 steak and the waiting staff make around $100,000 a year (Not joking, I have a friend who works there). You got bowling, golf courses, lazor tag, horse back riding, mini-gulf (putput), the zoo, Mosi (museum of science & industry) and the list just goes on and on.
We have some pretty good schools out here as well. Schwarzkopf Elementary is a great school. They have one class with one sometimes two teachers with no more the 25 kids per classroom. The school is in Calusa Trace (where I live) which is a very safe neighborhood that has police that drive through all the time to make sure it stays safe and clean. Schwarzkopf's Vision Statement:Each Schwarzkopf student will become an educated, capable citizen with a lifelong love of learning. And their Mission Statement: Schwarzkopf will provide all students with a variety of opportunities to expand their knowledge to reach their maximum potential.
I went here as a kid and I had a lot of fun. They have great teachers that will help you with anything and will make sure that everyone in the class understands before moving on in their lessons.
The middle schools I'm not to sure about because I went to a privet school. But I do know that Walker Middle School is a very good one. And the one my mother works at called John M. Sexton is a really good one. John M. Sexton is actually an elementary and a middle school which I believe is the only k-8 public school out here.
We have a lot of high schools and you have to watch out when looking at them because a lot of them look really nice, the staff will treat you really nice, but they will lie to your face by saying that they have no violence at all, that they are one of the best if not the best school in the district, that their teaching methods are one of a kind, etc... When really they are one of the worst schools, with no money to afford new books or computers, have gang members and drugs on campus, and here's an example of something that happened to me before I transferred out of the school, in all of my classes the teacher would give everyone a old dusty, torn up, colored in, piece of s*** book and tell us to just read, they also gave us a few pieces of paper with assignments on it and the due dates and tell us to start. That's it... That's all they did. So basically we were forced to teach ourselves and as you can imagine it didn't work out very well. However there are a few high schools that are amazingly good schools. Like Walter L. Sickles High School. It has been rated an A school for the past 9-10 years now. Up to date books and computers, all of the teachers care about all of their students and make sure that they learn as much as they can. They are always more then happy to stay after school or meet with you during lunch if you don't understand something they went over in class. It's in a great part of town. The four years I went there I only saw/heard of two fights but they were broken up before they even started. They have many many different classes to choice from to get you ready for college. It was just an amazing learning experience for me as well as my sister. If it hadn't been for Sickles High School I wouldn't be where I wanted to be in my life which is a paramedic firefighter. Sickles has also got an autistic student program designed for autistic students. It's 5-6 kids in a class along with 2-3 teachers. And the S.L.D. program is great, it helped me out more then words can say (I have A.D.D./ A.D.H.D/ O.C.D./ and learning disability's so I know a lot about the programs for the students that might need a little more help then others.
And then to top it all of we have U.S.F. right in the middle! One of the best colleges in Florida. I'm not going to get into that though because there is just far to much to say about USF.
I'm not sure if you would be able to find a 4 bedroom house for rent anywhere in the bay area however you could defiantly be able to find a really nice town-home or apartment in a good part of town or in a good neighborhood. There are a few places that you do want to stay away from which are 1.) The Springs or any place off of Nebraska Ave. and Florida Ave, 2.) Town-n-Country which is most of West Tampa from Waters Ave and Hillsborough and everything in between and 3.) There is a part of South Tampa that is pretty bad too but I can't remember the name because I never go there. Davis Island is a really nice place to live. Plus TGH is on the island so you would be right there. You would have a clear very of either the city of Tampa or the Bay or maybe even both. It can be a bit pricey though. Since you have younger kids you may want to check out Vandyke Farms in Lutz. It's really big and really nice for not to much. And the reason as to why I bring it up is because Vandyke Farms has got a whole lot of kids living there and it also has many parks. Most of the people you meet in Lutz are going to be really friendly as well, where as in Tampa people can be a little bit on the "don't talk to me" kinda side.
Wow!! I wrote about a chapter worth of reading hahaaa! Sorry about that. But if you have any questions for me don't be shy. Like I said I've been here for about 15 years and because of my job I drive all over Hillsborough so I'm very familiar, and I know a lot about parts of Tampa and Lutz and... I just some how know a lot about everything here hahaaa!
People get on the web to complain. The web is a gigantic complaint department, where miserable people can sit around at home, eating ring dings, with nothing to do but share their miserable existance with others who have a more optimistic and hopeful outlook on life.
Tampa is a great town- That said, everything that surrounds it is pretty blah. I would highly consider south tampa, westshore, westchase, or Tampa Palms. I am the resident single guy/nightlife concierge around here- so I dont know much about schools, but Plantucky and other suburb towns around tampa are either fairly ghetto or fairly redneck with trailerparks and 40 year old strip malls strewn about.
You sound very similar to me, before we moved down here. Here's the deal, you need to pay more in rent if you ant to live in a nice place within 30 minutes of Tampa General.
With $1300 you'll probably have to settle for a 3BD. Look at Realtor.com and look there for a good idea on what you can get for your money. Use the map feature. Good Luck!
@gypsychic -- Sarasota isn't out of the question. In fact, the guy who would be my new boss (an old co-worker of mine) lives in the Sarasota area, commutes to Tampa Gen'l, and loves it. I'm not wild about the idea of an hour commute each way, but if that's pretty normal then I can go with the flow.
I have to keep telling myself it's not Michigan...there won't be four months of blizzards to make my 50-mile commute take three hours.
@Andrew423 -- on the contrary, thanks for all the info on the schools! My son's in mainstream 5th grade, but we're always watching out for his best interests, you know?
@craigm1841 -- lol. Y'know, I get the feeling that some people will find something to hate no matter where they live. On the other hand, I think that people who try to make the best of things will get along wherever they go. It's frustrating reading one person say "Tampa, ecch, I'd live anywhere else first," directly followed by "Tampa, yay, I wouldn't live anywhere else." It makes it really hard to get an accurate picture.
@FloridaKash -- like I said above, I'm not militant about the half-hour commute. I'd rather have a longer drive to a nice home for my family, than live in crap to be close to work. I work to live, not live to work, you know?
Overall, if things play out it looks like I'd move down in March/April and my family would follow in June after the kids finish the school year, so I'll have a couple of months to scope things out and get set up, which would be nice.
@craigm1841 -- lol. Y'know, I get the feeling that some people will find something to hate no matter where they live. On the other hand, I think that people who try to make the best of things will get along wherever they go. It's frustrating reading one person say "Tampa, ecch, I'd live anywhere else first," directly followed by "Tampa, yay, I wouldn't live anywhere else." It makes it really hard to get an accurate picture.
It is hard to get an accurate picture on here- you are correct. This place is far better suited for gathering information rather then opinions.
Now- I love tampa... BUT... I would live in a few other places. I would move to San Diego in a heartbeat to name one off the top of my head.
I have lived in TX, SC, GA, and NY. this is my favorite place so far... Tampa has a lot to offer. A have heard people refer to it as the biggest small town in the US or the smallest big city in the US. And I agree.
Are you interested in private schools or just public schools? We just did the trip to Tampa and visited most of the private "alternative" schools i.e. IB, Montessori. I would be happy to share if you are interested in those.
Regarding public schools, the Plant School district in South Tampa seems to have the best reputation but as mentioned, the area is pricey and the homes in town are small.
We actually went to see a house out in Van Dyke farms (Lutz), which another poster mentioned. It was HUGE, 5BDs, pool, yard for mid 300K something. The shwartzkopf (sp) school mentioned also seems to have a great reputation and it is new and state of the art. The area was nice, with families as described but WAY to suburb for us. However, it sounds like it might be something you might like.
Are you interested in private schools or just public schools? We just did the trip to Tampa and visited most of the private "alternative" schools i.e. IB, Montessori. I would be happy to share if you are interested in those.
Regarding public schools, the Plant School district in South Tampa seems to have the best reputation but as mentioned, the area is pricey and the homes in town are small.
We actually went to see a house out in Van Dyke farms (Lutz), which another poster mentioned. It was HUGE, 5BDs, pool, yard for mid 300K something. The shwartzkopf (sp) school mentioned also seems to have a great reputation and it is new and state of the art. The area was nice, with families as described but WAY to suburb for us. However, it sounds like it might be something you might like.
Yeah- but Lutz isn't walkable like south tampa, and it is definately more than 30 mins from TGH.
Thanks again! I think we're leaning more toward the Sarasota / Sarasota Springs area, but that may change, too. I've heard the I75 commute to Tampa isn't as bad as, say, coming from the northwest.
Since everything is still at the "job lead" stage, though, I'm willing to relax and just see what happens. If things progress through "job interview" to "job offer" I'll probably have a shipload more questions. I think we have a decent idea about the area now, and thank you all.
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In reply to "Noodlenoggin's" post.
