Questions about Maywood? (Chicago, Rockford, Naperville: houses, neighborhoods, high school)

[chet everett]

Maywood has a few decent looking bungalows and even a handful of well maintained Victorians, sadly even the nicest of them sometimes are listed at very very low prices and still do not sell becuase the town really has nothing going for it. No home buyer or even a renter is going to put up with crummy schools, bad crime statistics and the general decline that has been plaqueing Maywood for decades. There are some isolated efforts to try to improve some things (the most notable effort of recent memory being the magnet school), but the result from that have been far from glowing -- the result from this supposedly "selective" school barely best the result from the entire population of nearby RB :

Proviso Math & Science Academy vs Riverside-Brookfield High School

http://goo.gl/Ac5jbB _vs_ http://goo./gl/BPCXgo

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by kp21

I am thinking of moving to Maywood as they do have a metra service and it is extremely close to the city and my work place in the west loop. Any other thoughts or what has already been said pretty much sum it up?

It's pretty much just as dangerous and run down as the notorious West Side neighborhoods of Chicago. I can think of a million better places to live. I can't imagine someone making a choice to live there if they weren't born in to it.

I don't think this has been stated directly enough yet in this thread. Maywood = "The Hood", but with fewer resources than the City of Chicago to deal with problems. There are some nicer blocks with rehabbed houses, but the Garfield Park and Austin neighborhoods in Chicago have blocks like this as well. Don't be fooled by a single nice house or apartment.

[ToriaT]

Is it safe to drive through Maywood? I lived there until I was four years old and my great uncle owned a deli on the main drag. I would love to drive by my old house, which was actually my great uncles' two flat some day just for the hell of it. I lived on fourth avenue I think it was a couple of blocks from a train track. Thinking if I do it maybe wait for a cold day and drive through on a Sunday morning when most of the mischief does not occur.

[chet everett]

Basically even the worst neighborhoods don't have any bad guys out in the morning... The are worn up from ring up all night.

[JacksonPanther]

Originally Posted by ToriaT

Is it safe to drive through Maywood?

Is this a serious question? No, it's not safe to drive through. All of the drivers lined up on Madison and Washington during rush hour are killed nightly.

Sheesh, if Maywood was unsafe to drive through, Oak Park would be in serious trouble because of lot of OPers commute throught Maywood.

[Alacran]

Maywood is fine.

It is not like the west side.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Alacran

Maywood is fine.

It is not like the west side.

The housing stock may be a little nicer, and there are probably more people who work for a living. But Maywood has the roughly the same murder rate as Austin.

As far as driving through any rough spot, how likely are drivers ever to be struck by stray bullets or carjacked? These things aren't very common in any Chicago neighborhood. But they could happen, I guess. I don't usually get too worried about it.

[North Side Brandon]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

The housing stock may be a little nicer, and there are probably more people who work for a living. But Maywood has the roughly the same murder rate as Austin.

Exactly Maywood has averaged 8 murders a year since 2000. Austin has averaged 37 in the same period. The thing is Maywood has about 25,000 and Austin has about 100,000. This guy should look at Berwyn, Forest Park and even Cicero before Maywood. Maywood is truly a hellhole and has been as long as I can remember.

[mewgirl]

Originally Posted by chet everett

There is a whole swath of the close to the city suburbs that have very little going for 'em -- once upon a time there were decent jobs in places like Northlake and Franklin Park and other towns. As the various challenges of taxation / workforce quality / migration shifting business needs have decimated the financial base of these places AND the poltical leadership has been inept / corrupt the fates of some towns looks horrible...

There are places that do have more "going for em" as Bru points out, and I agree that towns like Berwyn with good rail service to the Loop and a pretty well located hospital are lots better off than places that are more transportation challenged...

I am not a huge fan of the kinds of huckersters that have run Rosemont but they have effectively capitalized on their location near O'Hare / the expressways and are probably ahead of the curve for the region with regard to getting developers to build the kind "life style" places that with their nightspots, shopping and such are probably going to be appealing to the growing numbers of adults w/o children -- either married or single, working or retired there are going to be LOTS of people that fit that category...

These "sink hole" type towns are not just the older inner burbs too -- there are few in DuPage Co that I would avoid, as well as Lake Co and the fringes of Cook and the other collar counties too. In general, if they do not have some solid local employment base and/ or access to the Loop via good Metra service they need to really start thinking about what sorts of people are going to be able to support the high taxes and such that are pretty much inevitable as escalating problems with the state (it ain't just pensions...) squeeze the local units of government...

Okay this is ridiculous **** that I see over and over on this forum. Schaumburg and Hanover Park both have Metra stations and they are barely in use. The richest and safest places such as Bloomingdale and South Barrington have NO TRANSPORTATION AT ALL because MILLIONAIRES TEND TO ACTUALLY OWN CARS, duh! Nobody in most good suburbs care about "getting to the loop" anyway because why the **** would they ever want to go to Chicago?! If you are a stock trader you either live in downtown Chicago and/or own a car. Most people in these places are not stock traders and work at the Y or the high school 20 minutes away or less. A suggestion to go to Chicago for anyone who lives in these areas and ISN'T very very poor is an insane one. By which I mean if you suggest it they will look at you as though you are insane.

A suggestion to go from Cook County to the far end of Lake County or even to Rockford, which are an equal distance or farther, is much more reasonable to any not-extremely-poor human who lives here.

So obviously "lack of a Metra" is far from any reason to "make a suburb decline".

...Also. "ghetto-type-people" don't use Metra =\. Even if they live IN Chicago and are going between two areas which both have Metras, in which case the price is the same as a Chicago bus, they STILL don't use it.

And Hoffman Estates doesn't have a Metra either. I don't think there are any millionaire-type houses there.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by mewgirl

Nobody in most good suburbs care about "getting to the loop" anyway because why the **** would they ever want to go to Chicago?! If you are a stock trader you either live in downtown Chicago and/or own a car.

The Metra is full of people who own cars, but don't want to deal with traffic. Have you ever used it for commuting? Your comments make it sound like you haven't. Sometimes it seems like the entire CBOT is on the Metra.

Some of the most successful people I know use commuter lines like Metra or PATH in New York, including high-powered executives, investment bankers, and other "millionaires" (as if this is a term for a wealthy person any more--most middle-class retirees are millionaires these days).

People who choose not to live by Metra often work in the suburbs, and that is fine. If you want to work in the suburbs and don't think you'll ever need to commute downtown, you can save on your real estate by living away from a Metra station. But even the wealthy areas you mention (South Barrington, for instance) would have higher real estate prices if they were near a Metra station, and are actually quite a bit less expensive in terms of $/square foot compared to places like Hinsdale or Wilmette, which each have Metra prominently located in the center of town.