Specifics on Neighborhoods in Park Cities (University Park, Highland Park: real estate, how much, houses)

[aprilbigby]

My husband and I are looking for a home in Park Cities (PC). We have 2 young children, 8 and 6, who will go to public schools in Highland Park or University Park. We found a few houses we like and one we love. The one we love is in Highland Park (HP). It is on Stratford Avenue. It is lovely and has all of the things in a house we are looking for. We have one concern. We desperately want a street where there are lots of young kids and kids who play outside. I am concerned about that area of HP being extremely heavy in young kids and wondering how much street and frontyard play occurs.

Does anyone have any inside info on this area of HP?

The other house we liked is in University Park and just by seeing many kids outside pretty kid heavy. Unfortunately, the house is not perfect and would take sometime to get there...

Thanks for your help.. we are looking forward to moving back to Texas and finding a wonderful place to live.

[TurtleCreek80]

Highland Park south of Mockingbird between the 3400-4400 blocks is the most expensive Park Cities real estate. By nature, the average homeowner in this area is older and has either grown children or tends to have children in private schools (because when you own a $3-4M home, what's another $100k a year to put your 3 kids in St Mark's or send them to boarding school...) There are some HPISD kids in that area but far, far fewer than the 4500 blocks of HP and the entire UP/ HP north of Mockingbird.

You can see how few kids live south of Mockingbird by looking at the school attendance zones. Armstrong Elemetary reaches all the way from Armstrong Parkway/ Lakeside north as far as Lovers Lane & 75. That's how big of an area it takes to fill Armstrong which is the least populated elementary school. Same thing with Bradfield- the zone goes from Armstrong Parkway/ Fairway all the way north to Lovers Lane west of Preston.

If your goal is to have multiple families with kids on your block, you're not likely to have that on Stratford. However, I have a dear friend who grew up on Lakeside with no other kids in our class anywhere near her. She certainly had friends but not the neighborhood after school experience that I had in UP. As kids get older (middle school) it's much less of a big deal because their kids live all over HPISD at that point.