What is the Green Bay area like?? (Milwaukee, Appleton: leases, condo)

[JoplinFamily]

My family and I have been offered a job in Green Bay.
We now live in SW Missouri where the cost of living is great and the schools
are real good too. Gas today 9/23 was $2.05/g and milk is 2.37/g.
Propery taxes are $1400.00 for a $140,000 home.

What is the Bay area like as far as cost of living, schools and things to keep a young family from go crazy being new to the area? Is it a safe place to raise a family?

Any suggestions and help would be great.

[mrkool]

Schools are good. Crime pretty low. State and property taxes quite a bit higher than you're paying now. A $140K house in GB would be about double the property taxes you pay now. Winters mostly cloudy and quite cold. Weather would be an adjustment for you. Good area for hunting and fishing. If you're not a pro football fan, you will get totally sick of the hype and over-enthusiasm (in the whole state) over the Green Bay Packers.

[WishIwereinChicago]

Cost of living is so-so. We pay $430 for a small 1 bedroom. Not sure about house prices/tax. You have to have a car here. The bus system sucks. It shuts down early and we tend to have routes that double up some areas but miss others. Everything is spread out. The bus will serve you only for kids going to school or if the car is in the shop for a day or two.

I found that taking a taxi through downtown Chicago was much cheaper than taking one a comparable distance through GB.

As far going to a movie,eating out,shopping,etc prices here are comparable to any place else.

There are no museums,aquariums,art gallaries,etc. We have a small zoo about 15 minutes north. It's a nice zoo,a very small child will enjoy it but it only takes you about 30-45 minutes to go through it all and once you have you won't need to come back anytime soon.

We have boating,fishing(not that you can eat it),hunting,bowling,bars and the Packers. For major mall shopping you will probably find yourself wanting to go to Appleton. The GB mall sucks. We have the typical big box stores like Best Buy and Barnes and Noble and those are the same as anywhere else. Typical resturants..a few local gems. For pizza it's Frank and Pats or Bilotti's. Burgers it's Krolls.

The east side is a aging pit of stagnant growth. Downtown is nothing. They are trying to revitalize it. There is talk of new condo's and a 'signature' office tower being built but as far as 'culture' or small,distinct shops or a city square where people gather...we don't have it. You will probably spend 90% of your time on the westside/Ashwaubenon. Thats were everything worthwhile is.

Crime is very low. You can walk home from the corner market at 10pm and not have to be afraid. We have a few 'bad parts' of town but they are mostly to be avoided at night on foot. There really aren't any parts during the day and no parts you need to avoid in a car. There was a murder downtown last night outside a club but that is very rare. Safety is maybe the one feather in our cap. You can let your kids play in the yard and not have to worry.

No gang problem. You don't have to worry about being mugged or harrassed by a homeless person while walking downtown after dark.

We do have some downtown festivals. Art Street and Bay Fest are mostly for eating and listening to local bands. Not a bad way to kill a summer afternoon.

We have the Resch Center,a brand new arena. We get just about every major concert through town. Country acts tend to sell out fast.
We have the Meyer Theater downtown which has had some good concerts and plays. We have the Green Bay Gamblers hockey. Green Bay Blizzard,arena football (AFL2). The Milwaukee Bucks play an NBA exhibition game up here once each pre-season. And of course the Packers.

Green Bay is very good if you have kids. If you are say,25 and single GB is not for you unless you have an amazing job and can travel alot.

We have UW-Green Bay and NWTC for college.

Lots of parks. City is pretty clean. Water is nasty both for drinking or swiming.

Lots of churches. Some very beautiful old churches downtown.

Good airport.

City tends to shut down around 9pm. After 10pm for shopping it's Copps (groceries) or WalMart. For eating out it's Denys,McDonalds,Taco Bell or Krolls.

If you are the types to be in bed by 8pm then it's all good. If you are night owls like me,not so much.

To sum up,Green Bay is a clean,safe city thats got pretty good schools and is a very family oriented community. It's cost of living is fair,not great,not horrible.

It's biggest downfall is how there is nothing to do unless you are an major outdoorsman. And I hate how EVERYTHING is Packers. Good and bad.

I have to admit Curleys Pub inside Lambeau Field is awesome. And the Packers are great to have but for some people here it's all that matters and it gets to be too much. But,better than not having them.

Oh,local am-fm radio sucks. FM has a few ok stations (WNCY,WAPL) but AM is bad. It's almost all national stuff,very little local radio and what we do have is bad. If you love the radio,buy XM or Sirius.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette is our paper. We used to have two major daily papers (one of only a few cities in the whole country) but now it's just the P-G. Great for local news but for national news or culture buy the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal.

We have all the major cell phone carriers but for T-Mobile and Altell. I suggest Cellcom or US Cellular unless you can keep your current carrier. I have not heard good things about Cingular in this area. Verizon is fine.

Cable is Time-Warner is it's good. Excellent customer service up here.

I think that covers a good swath of life up here. Any questions just lemme know.

[sgroher]

HATE GREEN BAY!!! Don't get me wrong the people are great but for what I pay for taxes it's a rip off. The public schools absolutely suck! Unless you plan on private education for your kids stay away from Green Bay. Can't speak for surrounding areas, Ashwaubenon, De Pere etc. Green Bay itself is stil your good 'ol mill town. Dirty, run down and tired. Population is trending down but they still want a fourth high school built. Truency and test scores are horrible. If not for our jobs my husband and I wouldn't live here. Would love to move back to my hometown of Appleton but gas is too expensive to make the run every day. On $120,000 home you pay $2500 in taxes. Appleton's taxes are about the same but the city is much more progressive and family friendly. Crime does exist in Green Bay and you are starting to see more of an influence coming from Milwaukee. Yes, Green Bay is obsessed with the Packers but come on, they are what is right with sports. Good community involvement and suprisingly many of them keep interests in Green Bay even after they leave.

[MediaDoggie]

The others have said it well. I grew up in Green Bay and after all these years little has changed. It has only spread out more and there is no freeway through town. I am not counting I-172 to the West. The airport is a joke. The general consenses of the population is narrow minded. The city council cannot get things done and never could.
Developers have shown interest in downtown and some have been literally laughed out of town by the development committee. There is some movement to bring in offices downtown after it hit rock bottom.. and I mean almost nothing left. There will never be shopping again in what once was a shopping magnet for N.E. Wisconsin.
Some new restaurants opened downtown to great publicity last year and as far as I've heard they are all out of business already. Forty years ago a sports writer from Chicago wrote you can't even get a cup of coffee in downtown Green Bay on Sunday. That is still correct.

[Red Flame]

Ashwaubenon is fairly decent as far as schools but I may be biased because I am an Ashwaubenon HS grad. If I were to live in the GB area it would be in Ashwaubenon again. There are nice places in the region, althogh taxes and village fees might be high if you plan on owning your own home. I don't know because I don't own my own home. But if you rent you can get a decent place between 5 and 700.

[mopaper]

A Small town is a small town. If you come from a large city and transplant here...its a change. I remember my first year here and getting up early for work. I turned on the television and the farm reports were on. All I could say was...wow.

There is a lot to be said for Green Bay and I've posted my good about it but it has one major problem. Its boring. On the surface they seem to want the city to grow and bring in more creative options but on the other they are stuck in such a conservative slumber that they run all the new ideas away.

Downtown is so boring that its embarassing. Bars, thats it. They don't seem to have much creativity here. No Art Galleries worth going to. No good restaurants downtown. Its dead on weekends. Compare to little La Crosse, WI where Saturday downtown the restaurants are packed. Good food, lots of pedestrian traffic. Its just alive. Green Bay is larger and has nothing on the weekend except the farmer's Market which is gone by this time of year.

It reminds me of a suburb not a city. Literally, if the Packers left this city would die. Job opportunities are a matter of opinion. Industrial, food service. Without a thriving, creative downtown what would be the point of new businesses moving here.

They are backwards when it comes to development. They think if they build something downtown people will come from other places to keep it going. The problem is they have nothing of interest downtown in the works for people who like to spend money and do...stuff. People liked the mall downtown and so did I but lets face it, it sucked the life out of all the small businesses. The leases were too high and you would be amazed at the number of people who grew up in Green Bay who didn't know it was there anyway.

Their solution is always a new bar. You have to have good taste to build a successful downtown. I have not seen that yet. It always seems like some backwards idea people are doing the planning.

Finally, without a thriving public transportation service you have no hope of drawing the traffic to downtown. They are dependent on how well public transportation flows in and out of the downtown area and how often.

The bus service is the same as it was when I moved here over a decade ago. Sad and inadequate for a city committed to growth. I would love to go downtown and feel the pulse of a thriving city. Its just not there. The only thing they do really well is raise taxes. What's new about that? They really need some new blood in the city council but all they really do is bore you to death with the history of the area.

I see a city growing but the backward historians are fighting to keep the stuffy 100 year old era alive. Public transportation is going to become a big issue in the near future as more people come here from larger cities. They're just not ready for them. They don't understand what makes urban dwellers tic.

I like Green Bay. It has a lot of potential. They just need to make up their minds whether they want to grow or become stagnant, whether they want the city to be known for Go Packers! Or have a creative thriving city that does not have to depend on the packers to thrive and stay alive. Its sad to have people visit the city and not be able to find a good cup of coffee downtown.

[Red Flame]

As a public transportation rider, I will agree that the service does suck. I have lived elsewhere where buses stop running later than 9:00 PM like Green Bay. If you ride the bus, you have no life after 9 PM because of the fact the City of Green Bay says that they don't have the money to fund it.

They get enough money from the Packers to fund things. All they need to do is realocate some money from the high paid salaries that the City Council get to a more proactive cause for the city. But like what was said before, they are too narrow-minded for that.

[satkins12]

Another place to consider living if you are going to be working in GB would be the city of De Pere...about 5 min. away from GB. It's smaller than GB and the school system is really great. It still has a little bit of that small-town feel, and has really nice neighborhoods....it's the type of place where most people are friends with their neighbors and watch out for each other. It's very safe, very very little crime. My mother has been walking the family dog after dark since as long as I can remember and she always feels perfectly safe. It's the perfect place to raise kids (I was raised there, and I turned out all right!