Possible move from Chicago to KC....

[Thrillcekr]

KCMO, I have noticed the lurkers from Kansas on here a lot as well. Probably realtors trying to persuade them to look in their direction. The sad thing is that they pride themselves so much on their schools but the Park Hill and Lee's Summit districts on the Missouri side outperform them on a regular basis.

If you're looking for some suburbs with some charm then I'd recommend old town Parkville first and foremost. There's simply nothing quite like it anywhere in the suburbs. It's also anything but dead and full of old people. There's a small university there as well as several festivals and parades to take part in. The residents in the old part of Parkville send their kids to high school at Park Hill South which is nearly always rated in the top 3 metro wide in terms of what students score on the ACT. North Kansas City is also a very urban suburb with good schools.

I'll agree and disagree with KCMO. I'll agree that no place in the area can compete with midtown KC in terms of architectural beauty and such. Brookside, Waldo, and neighborhoods of the like are hard to compete with. As far as shopping and entertainment, many shopping and entertainment centers have came and went over the years but the Plaza has been here since the 1920's and has outlasted them all. It is still the pinnacle for such activities in KC. People from all over the metro make the drive to spend time there.

Downtown is not like Chicago but it is experiencing a major renaissance. So much so that it's been very widely reported in major papers across the country because of the speed at which KC has been able to accomplish this. Something like 4 billion dollars has been invested there in the last 7 or 8 years. There's new office buildings, a new arena, the Power & Light entertainment district, and several other projects either completed or under construction there. Most of the older building stock either has or will be converted into loft apartments and high end urban residential.

However, every public school in the state is required to report standardized test scores to the state and the urban schools do lag behind a bit in this area. There simply is no way to refute that. However, the best private schools in the entire metro area are all in KCMO. Pembroke Hill, Barstow, Rockhurst, and Notre Dame de Sion are the most elite schools around here period. If you've got the money to send your kids to these schools then you're buying the best education available in the area. That's a fact that and even the prideful Johnson Countians ship their kids across the state line to these Missouri based schools if they have deep enough pockets.