Appleton (Madison: college, living in, floors)

[Dubuquer1]

Who has lived in Appleton, or lives there now? What is it like?

[crazyme4878]

I lived there for a couple years in the late nineties. My husband grew up there. We are small town people, so for us its a great place to visit, but not a place the raise our family. Loud bar scene downtown, tons of chain and big-box stores, a slightly upscale mall. Lots of traffic, lots of capitalism. But also a lot of great resturants. I really love the renovated Children's Museum. Not much help, but like I said, for the last eight years, I have only visited while at my mom-in-law's. If you have specific questions, I might be able to answer them.

[yo vanilla]

I've lived here for 7 years or so. I suppose if you're used to living in a town of 500 people you might find the traffic to be a bit thick, but in reality it is very light. There's just a couple of major roads that get pretty packed (and by the mall on the weekends it is pretty thick) and everything else is easy going. Nearly all of the chain restaraunts (I do not like) are outside of city limits and in the townships (such as Grand Chute, on the northeast side).

Personally I think the area overall is too sprawled out and I'd like to see more actual business come to the downtown area. Y'know, like a real city. By business, I mean office space. Plenty of shops and restaraunts in the downtown area. For instance the old AAL office building on College Ave (now called the 222) building sold for a paltry $5 million recently. It sat on the market forever. It's got a total of 14 floors and less than half are being used, to my knowledge. We should build a real convention center, there's been a smidge of talk about that but nothing done.

But it's a safe city, mostly clean and free of riff-raff, besides the hellish winters there's stuff to do like... there's a great comedy club, a very nice performing arts center, lots of good not-chain restaraunts, if you like bar hopping we've got more of those than Madison, the mall is very good, the children's museum is great, there's a farmer's market on saturdays on college ave, there's lots of parking ramps downtown so parking is never an issue.

So, it's not so bad here. Except for winter.

[crazyme4878]

Come on, winter in Appleton really isn't bad, relative to many other places just a short drive north!! Some winters you are lucky to have more than 1 1/2 months of real snow.

[yo vanilla]

it stays at or near 0F for a long friggin time around here. it absolutely sucks. i have nothing nice to say about winter, especially here.

[crazyme4878]

It could be -20 for a month at a time or snow more than 300 inches a year. Lived in places that did.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by crazyme4878

It could be -20 for a month at a time or snow more than 300 inches a year. Lived in places that did.

The fact that there are places where winter is in the 98th percentile of awfulness doesn't make it any more bearable in places where it is in the 95th percentile of awfulness...

[yo vanilla]

Couldn't have said it better myself, Drover. Someone else's -20F doesn't change the fact that my car season is a paltry 4 months long

[hc7612]

Originally Posted by Dubuquer1

Who has lived in Appleton, or lives there now? What is it like?

Yes, we lived there for 3 years. Moved in 2004. I still miss it. I must disagree with whoever said it is not a great place to raise a family. It is a wonderful area, and extremely safe. There is so much to do as a family or if you are single. The people are some of the most friendly we have ever encountered. The winters are cold, but the 3 years we were there, there was not a lot of snow. So, to sum up Appleton, a great place to live. In fact it is one place that we would move back to if we could.

[crazyme4878]

I didn't mean that it isn't a good place to raise kids; I just meant it isn't the type of place we want to raise our kids. We just have ideologies that don't mesh well with the over feel of Appleton. By the way, my husband grew up in Appleton, so we have a knowledge of what we want and if the city can actually provide that. Like I said, we are small town people. I mean small. Really, really small (we are super excited at the possibility of a job in a town of 700).