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Also, although the West Loop isn't known as the most young-family centric neighborhood, you certainly wouldn't be the first family with a young child.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised as to just how young-family friendly the West Loop actually is, especially with the new Adams and Sangamon Park.
I live in central Naperville presently. I do draw a line between this part of town and some of its exurban-style fringes. Someone called Naperville the epitome of bland suburbia. The built environment near me is anything but bland, and I wonder if that person has spent much time over here. But I have some complaints as well. I checked out this area thoroughly and repeatedly before I moved in, but it still had some surprises for me that I couldn't see walking around town.
Here are some advantages and drawbacks I didn't fully understand until I lived here.
Pros:
Near-absolute safety. If you feel like going for a stroll at midnight, go ahead. Crime absolutely can happen anywhere, anytime; but practically, I worry more about getting struck by lightning than getting mugged near my home.
Everything is mostly just, nice, when walking or driving around. Trees everywhere, every property is well-kept, the city infrastructure and streetscapes are top-notch and tasteful. My block is pretty century-old homes across the street from a handsome college campus.
Traffic is great. People complaining about Naperville traffic must be talking about the area near IL-59 and the mall. But that is 3+ miles west of me and is irrelevant except for the once a month or less that I shop there. Except for Washington St. on a summer Friday or Saturday night, all the arterials and highways near me are always pleasant and efficient driving.
Biking is teriffic. Trails, trails, everywhere! New pedestrian tunnels under 75th St. and Washington St. are very nice and demonstrate the town's commitment to biking. Some trails are along the DuPage River and other nice natural features.
Built environment near the central area has some honest-to-goodness charm. Nice varied housing stock, NCC campus is pretty, some real hills, brick sidewalks, mature trees. A diversity of building styles due to variety of ages and haphazard scattering of tear-downs and additions.
CONS
Downtown commerce is a little disappointing. Best and biggest downtown in the farther-out burbs, but much of it is specialty stores and there is less that is useful on a day-to-day basis, excepting all the restaurants and bars. For example, downtown has at least six jewelers and two furniture stores, but no hardware store and no place you can buy a loaf of bread.
Downtown "scene" is a little disappointing. Downtown bars are varied and plentiful, but are bereft of anyone between the ages of 24 and 34. I don't want to say there are no people of those ages shopping or eating in town, but as far as nightlife there are very few. On the weekends it truly is THE place to be out here for high school through college aged people and is hopping.
It is far from the culture. Don't totally discount the culture out in the burbs, there is some nice theatre, music and comedy that plays at the local college performing arts centers and other places. But from time to time there is definitely something I'd like to go see in Chicago, and it's a long ride. Shows are typically on Friday or Saturday night, the exact times it is most impossible to actually make the drive.
It is more homogeneous than I expected. I am not into "diversity" in the sense that I have some deep-seated need to see non-white faces around town. But there is not much diversity in walks of life. Most people around here are in the same band of ages, pretty similar income, pretty similar education and careers, mostly grew up somewhere else and moved here for the schools. You could say almost the same thing about, say, Lincoln Square. But at least it is quite near areas with people from different origins and walks of life. From my house, most people have similar demographic characteristics and lifestyles out to a radius of probably 5 miles in every direction.
I live near the Metra station, and the BNSF is extremely efficient for those working in the Loop daytime business hours M-F. It is not as much use as I expected other times of the week. At off-hours and weekends mostly only locals run that take just over an hour; these off-hours being precisely the times when traffic dies away enough so that driving takes half as long as that.
Pertinent details about me: 29 year old single male who grew up in the south suburbs.
I live in central Naperville presently. I do draw a line between this part of town and some of its exurban-style fringes. Someone called Naperville the epitome of bland suburbia. The built environment near me is anything but bland, and I wonder if that person has spent much time over here. But I have some complaints as well. I checked out this area thoroughly and repeatedly before I moved in, but it still had some surprises for me that I couldn't see walking around town.
Here are some advantages and drawbacks I didn't fully understand until I lived here.
Pros:
Near-absolute safety. If you feel like going for a stroll at midnight, go ahead. Crime absolutely can happen anywhere, anytime; but practically, I worry more about getting struck by lightning than getting mugged near my home.
Everything is mostly just, nice, when walking or driving around. Trees everywhere, every property is well-kept, the city infrastructure and streetscapes are top-notch and tasteful. My block is pretty century-old homes across the street from a handsome college campus.
Traffic is great. People complaining about Naperville traffic must be talking about the area near IL-59 and the mall. But that is 3+ miles west of me and is irrelevant except for the once a month or less that I shop there. Except for Washington St. on a summer Friday or Saturday night, all the arterials and highways near me are always pleasant and efficient driving.
Biking is teriffic. Trails, trails, everywhere! New pedestrian tunnels under 75th St. and Washington St. are very nice and demonstrate the town's commitment to biking. Some trails are along the DuPage River and other nice natural features.
Built environment near the central area has some honest-to-goodness charm. Nice varied housing stock, NCC campus is pretty, some real hills, brick sidewalks, mature trees. A diversity of building styles due to variety of ages and haphazard scattering of tear-downs and additions.
CONS
Downtown commerce is a little disappointing. Best and biggest downtown in the farther-out burbs, but much of it is specialty stores and there is less that is useful on a day-to-day basis, excepting all the restaurants and bars. For example, downtown has at least six jewelers and two furniture stores, but no hardware store and no place you can buy a loaf of bread.
Downtown "scene" is a little disappointing. Downtown bars are varied and plentiful, but are bereft of anyone between the ages of 24 and 34. I don't want to say there are no people of those ages shopping or eating in town, but as far as nightlife there are very few. On the weekends it truly is THE place to be out here for high school through college aged people and is hopping.
It is far from the culture. Don't totally discount the culture out in the burbs, there is some nice theatre, music and comedy that plays at the local college performing arts centers and other places. But from time to time there is definitely something I'd like to go see in Chicago, and it's a long ride. Shows are typically on Friday or Saturday night, the exact times it is most impossible to actually make the drive.
It is more homogeneous than I expected. I am not into "diversity" in the sense that I have some deep-seated need to see non-white faces around town. But there is not much diversity in walks of life. Most people around here are in the same band of ages, pretty similar income, pretty similar education and careers, mostly grew up somewhere else and moved here for the schools. You could say almost the same thing about, say, Lincoln Square. But at least it is quite near areas with people from different origins and walks of life. From my house, most people have similar demographic characteristics and lifestyles out to a radius of probably 5 miles in every direction.
I live near the Metra station, and the BNSF is extremely efficient for those working in the Loop daytime business hours M-F. It is not as much use as I expected other times of the week. At off-hours and weekends mostly only locals run that take just over an hour; these off-hours being precisely the times when traffic dies away enough so that driving takes half as long as that.
Pertinent details about me: 29 year old single male who grew up in the south suburbs.
Again, this is describing the small core area. What I was referring to was everything else beyond that (where the vast majority of Naperville resides). Its pleasant enough, in a upper middle-class suburban bland sort of way, but its not 'walkable'. And even the area that is walkable, is only walkable in a bars/restaurants kind of way. I'd also mention this core area has lost some charm with the teardown mania of the past 10-15 years - although that issue went far beyond Naperville.
And chet - I have a friend who until recently was commuting Brookfield to Naperville. Before that it was Forest Park to Naperville. He always mentioned how great it was that he avoided most of the traffic on his commute. There's little traffic on 88, for now, and with the open tolls, 4 lanes, and the ability to exit before the Mannheim madness - its not a difficult trip.
Brookfield, I agree, will put younger enough west to make using surface streets a viable option when I88 is choked. You still deal with the bottleneck at Hillside, but surface street exits at Mannhiem and 17th serve as a "relief valve" to bail off the Ike.
Still, Brookfield ain't the West Loop or UIC -- those are MUCH farther.
I would also point out that the six blocks from the Naperville Metra station to the full size Jewel-Osco is just as walkable as any trip from within Brookfield to any grocery store there. The poster who said "bread can't bought" in downtown Naperville must think of Ogden as some non-walkable barrier, the Walgreens and CVS stores also sell bread. When it comes to walkability one could also hoof it to the Butera on Maple if you are in an eastern part of Naperville, though I would admit that area is less walkable. The thing about comparing say a Brookfield to Naperville is that based on size alone it like tossing all of North Riverside and Lyons and Hodkins in with Brookfield to get to the size of Naperville -- I'm sure there are some crusty old curmudgeons that would say Naperville should never have expanded that much ("... all them subdivisions out at the fringes ought to be part of Waubansville or Nequaland...") but the folks do contribute scale and revenue to the parks, police, City services (Naperville owns it's own electric grid, waster plant, sewage treatment, planning and inspection departs as well as forestry and every other kind of municipal service under the sun -- something that gives it more in commonnwith Chicago than any other suburb. It runs them efficiently and is ablemto spread costs over a huge population base that mostly understands that fair taxes and honest services are far better than Chicago's system of artificially low taxes for those that are connected or just hang around a long time and services more geared toward keeping an army of captive voters imprisoned inside the City limits...
{seriously you suburb haters keep poring on the bland and boring and darn tooting' I am gonna pour on the corruption and ridiculous level of non-responsiveness from Chicago civil servants}
{seriously you suburb haters keep poring on the bland and boring and darn tooting' I am gonna pour on the corruption and ridiculous level of non-responsiveness from Chicago civil servants}
That's fine. Should be fun!
Most suburbs are boring and bland.
PS - my alderman responds to every request I make. And quickly! Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Oh, and how about the DuPage County board, and Mr. Pagano of Metra?
I don't really understand why people feel they need to put down one area to make themselves feel better about where they live. Different strokes for different folks, if we all thought the same everything would be the same.
I don't really understand why people feel they need to put down one area to make themselves feel better about where they live. Different strokes for different folks, if we all thought the same everything would be the same.
Objective measures, or even politely subjective impressions are something that I no problem with --
consider "It would difficult to get out to have a dinner with one's family in Lakeview if you spent almost two hours in traffic coming back home from Naperville. " vs "Your spouse will never eat with you on a weeknight if you are commuting from work in Naperville to Lincoln Park where she strolled with the baby for hours wishing she could interact with actual moms instead of nannies. " Which sounds less offensive?
Perhaps another twist "Dozens of families with young children meet for dinner at tapas places or other interesting resturants minutes away from employment centers in Naperville or Warrenville." vs "You will be doomed to a life of eating only at chain resturants should you choose to live anyplace where your zip code doesn't start with 606xx".
I fully understand that GIVEN COMPLETE AND FACTUAL INFORMATION some people will choose longer commmutes to be in an area that more densely populated however I HAVE LITTLE TOLERANCE for folks that deny the reality of very pleasant life that many who choose to live near suburban employers...
{seriously you suburb haters keep poring on the bland and boring and darn tooting' I am gonna pour on the corruption and ridiculous level of non-responsiveness from Chicago civil servants}
You do that already.
We are all providing a mix of facts interspersed with our own opinions on areas. I typically keep my opinions to Chicago, but since this particular subject includes Naperville, I'm providing my opinion on the vast majority of Naperville, and by default the vast majority of suburbs west of I-294.
Yes, bland can be a perjorative word. I also find it to most accurately express the housing and lifestyle for the post 50's burbs, and particularly the burbs that sprang out of farmland in the 80's & 90's.
My opinions, written under the handle 'jdiddy' on city-data message boards, are not intended to be presented as unbiased journalistic neutrality. I apologize, with a heavy heart, to anyone who may have thought otherwise.
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My review of central Naperville
