Blacksburg living (Roanoke, Charlottesville, Christiansburg: environment, relocate, transplants)

[skoegler]

OK. Here's the requested data first:

-Where you are working (freelance writer working at home - just need Internet connection)

-How much you are willing to spend on housing (couple hundred thou?)

-How long of a commute you're willing to tolerate (N/A)

-If you have kids: Private school or public school? (N/A)

-What type of neighborhood environment you are looking for: small town feeling? small city excitement? suburbia delight? (this is the biggie. We're in a small town in NC now with NO city life. - no Starbucks, a Lowes but no Home depot, a Walmart but no Target, only a couple decent restaurants. But the location is gorgeous. We're hoping that the 'college town' atmoshpere of a place like Blacksburg would add some intelligent life)

-Community amenities important to you (decent restaurants, moderate shopping abilities, cultural events beyond - but including- bluegrass)

-Pie or cake? (all the above)

Comments and suggestions welcomed.

[roanoker 4]

Blacksburg may fulfill your needs. Small town feeling yet closely knit university community. Not a Mayberry feeling since the residents are highly
educated and many come from outside the U.S. Long time Blacksburg residents tend to favor a quiet rural lifestyle and socialize within their own small circle of university folk. The religion is Hokie Nation, Football is #1 acitivity. There are Starbucks, Home Depot, Loews, more being built.
Location is perhaps the best on the east coast. Not a retirement community or fast growing as NC. The areas' population grows at a small clip. I don't think the northern transplants know of this area, only NC. If you're part of the university you will be inducted into the Hokie Nation Hall of Fame and you will never leave town. When you leave Blacksburg you are in Montgomery County. Christiansburg is an entirely different town with trailer parks and a more Mayberry feel. Its more working class and in many ways a suburb of Roanoke(although the residents would never acknowledge anything like that).
This region is quite diverse, the next county over is Franklin with the Smith Mountain Lake retirees or similar to Lake Norman in NC.

[seanpecor]

Okay I'm going to be the Blacksburg buzz-killer. I lived in Blacksburg for almost a year and I loved most aspects but the reasons we opted to relocate to a rural section of the Roanoke metro area are because Blacksburg lacked some of the things that you also appear to find important.

Blacksburg is home to Virginia Tech. Tech is huge. You'd think this would imply a large amount of cultural events. Not so. The issue is that Tech is a ag/polytechnic engineering college. This seems to significantly impede interest in the Arts. We were starving for evening events like Plays or Ballets or big Concerts. There was hardly anything out there. Only one professional play production the whole year we were there. If we wanted entertainment we had to drive to Roanoke, which was close to an hour one way.

On the other hand if you had kids, there is alot of support for young ones. The youth are really catered to, which is unsurprising given the number of professors with kids and the parents' involvement in parks & rec etc.

There are lots of restaurants but they lack diversity. Most cater to the college kid crowd so anything that soaks up beer (burgers, fries, pizza, wings) is easy to find but there are just a handful of restaurants that cater to adults.

Blacksburg has no big box stores. I mean _none_. They're all in Christiansburg. When we lived in town, we were a 22 minute drive to Lowes, Home Depot, Target, Walmart etc. I live in the "boonies" in Boones Mill, which is resplendant in the natural beauty you enjoy where you are in NC. However, here in the "boonies", I'm only 15-20 minutes from a dozen big box stores. This still kills me: I put more miles on our vehicles living in town in Blacksburg then I do now, in rural Franklin County

Blacksburg doesn't feel like a town, because the infrastructure is built to support such a large student population. It's much more like a small city. Roads are flawless. Homes are generally well kept. But there is a real struggling merchant economy. The downtown itself is full of empty or struggling storefronts; the full-time population of Blacksburg is only 12,000. Losing 28,000 college kids every summer makes it tough to keep the doors open.

There _are_ plenty of smart folks in Blacksburg. The town is 62% white collar and even the guys and gals wearing flannel are likely college professors so it's a real intellectually rewarding place to live. Again it's the cultural bankruptcy of the town that is the crux of my issue with it. If you don't need cultural events, museums, a wide variety of civic groups to choose from, festivals and special events every week to unwind your mind then it's not a big deal. But if you are hungry for those things, you just might starve in Blacksburg unless you don't mind driving 2 hours round trip.

The Blacksburg housing market is pretty well elevated. It's still a seller's market. For $200,000 in town you'll get a townhouse. Which is fine but this is a college town, and even more, it's a football town, so townhouses can be noisy on certain weekends. If you wanted more house you'd have to live in Christiansburg, which is not the most bucolic place to be on account that it's turned into a major retail hub for the Blacksburg/Radford/Christiansburg metro area. If you wanted country you'd have to go north of Blacksburg into Giles County. Which is drop dead gorgeous mountain country but your current location in NC would seem like W 42nd St New York compared to Giles County

Don't rule out Blacksburg based on my thoughts, but certainly take a closer look when you next visit. I'd take a look at Roanoke and Charlottesville too. We love the Roanoke area. We're in Franklin County, which is just beautiful and we are close to Roanoke and Rocky Mount. So we get to have our pie and cake and eat it too. For $200K you could get a real nice place with fixed wireless broadband (what we have - B2X Online) or cable internet. You could be within a 15-20 minute drive to 100 restaurants, a Target, Super Wal-marts, Home Depot, Lowes, TJ Maxx, Staples. And Smith Mountian Lake. And a gorgeous little town called Rocky Mount which is set to begin a bluegrass amptitheatre to mark it as the gateway to the Crooked Road. And big name concerts in Roanoke, and a packed full calendar of Roanoke Symphony, Mill Mountain Theater and professional productions every month.

Anyway, just some thoughts from someone who also works from home!

Sean