Beloit. What is bad about Beloit? (Milwaukee, Madison: sales, apartment complexes, condo)

[Chelito23]

Drover was acknowledging what you were saying-that yes, Superior is not all that great, it is just not as bad as Gary. It is run down, older, has seen better days etc...but Gary is truely a dangerous and scary place to live. Superior is just a nothing special kind of place you wouldn't want to live...but Gary beats it by far, so Drover was saying there is really no comparison on that level. I tend to agree that Racine, Kenosha and Beloit are the SE Wisconsin equivelents of Gary(although, nowhere near as bad). I haven't been to Superior lately though, so if there is anything outrageous that has happened there in the past couple of years, please let us know! Thanks.

[M TYPE X]

Photos of Kenosha and Racine look good to me, nicer than say, Muskegon. What am I missing? I did not time to visit them yesterday driving back down to Champaign from Milwaukee.

I did not stop in Rockford or Beloit-Janesville on my way up to Madison on Tuesday.

[kimberlykeno]

I spent some time in the Chicago area and Beloit had the reputation of being "low rent" and very blue collar. I had also heard that there was quite a lot of gang activity.

[CarolL]

Originally Posted by kimberlykeno

I spent some time in the Chicago area and Beloit had the reputation of being "low rent" and very blue collar. I had also heard that there was quite a lot of gang activity.

It's really too bad about Beloit. I remember when it was a booming town with lots of jobs, pre-1980... And it has a wonderful college -- Beloit College -- a tiny liberal arts school with a caring faculty and international relations program. (My daughter was a student there.)

[LML]

Originally Posted by CarolL

It's really too bad about Beloit. I remember when it was a booming town with lots of jobs, pre-1980... And it has a wonderful college -- Beloit College -- a tiny liberal arts school with a caring faculty and international relations program. (My daughter was a student there.)

My son graduated there too....#1 in his year (not that I'm a proud mother or anything.) It is an excellent college and he received an excellent education.

[CarolL]

Originally Posted by LML

My son graduated there too....#1 in his year (not that I'm a proud mother or anything.) It is an excellent college and he received an excellent education.

You deserve to be proud!! I was really impressed with Beloit College. They honestly care about their students, and proved it to us more than once.

[spent]

lots of crime, especially for a town that size. Not real pretty, either.

[pirate_lafitte]

For its size maybe, but in general, Racine looks worse, though not as bad as other post-industrial places such as Detroit, Cleveland, Gary, etc.

[LML]

Originally Posted by spent

Not real pretty, either.

Again, it depends on where you look. Have you been in the newly revitalized riverfront area? Beautiful...absolutely beautiful. And how about Bill Hills Park? Leason's Park? The Turtle Creek area? Beloit College Campus? Old Mill Park? I could go on and on. There are many, many truly beautiful areas of Beloit. But you have to open your eyes to them. Yeah, there are neighborhoods that are run down but I have to tell you that I have never been in a community where there weren't. And there are neighborhoods with a high crime rate but there are a lot of us who lived a lifetime in Beloit without ever coming into contact with crime at all. Beloit gets a bad rap in many respects. I could make assumptions about why that is but the truth is that there are good and bad things about any community and, in my mind, the good outweigh the bad in Beloit.

[midwest1]

Beloit is one of the Midwest's most underrated places. It seems to be on the verge of a pretty sustained turnaround/renaissance.

I too attended the College (in the late 80's at the city's lowpoint) and was literally shocked when I visited last year. ABC Supply's Headquarters overlooking the Rock River, the Ironworks Complex and Murals overlooking the river, the new Poetry Garden, new restaurants, bars, shops, condos downtown, all of the major public art/sculpture, great Mexican food.

In the last couple of decades, Beloit has seen absolutely tremendous progress.

And according to the Mayor's "state of the city" speech, the city added nearly 300 units of new housing last year and is on track for the same amount this year. Not bad for a Rust Belt city of 35,000.

In addition, the area has attracted some major new job growth with Kettle Foods, Staple Distribution, and Kerry Foods.


And if that isn't enought to make Beloit-haters rethink things a bit, this year the BIFF Beloit International Film Fest received nationwide press, even in the New York Times as it went head to head with Sundance.