Relocating to Syracuse area - Help deciding on town. (Albany: real estate market, house)

[annamax102006]

Hi,
I have been reading these threads for a few months and I have fond them to be very helpful! I have narrowed down the towns I am interested in considering but I am not 100% sure. Any feedback at all would be wonderful.

My husband's company is starting to grow in the CNY area and it looks like Syracuse would work for a new office. It looks like Baldwinsville, FM, and JD are good school districts and nice areas. My question is this, what are these areas like?

I like to live near a village with a large city not too far. I have two fourteen month old babies and I really don't want to be in a very rural area. I looked at a house that I really like in Manlius but it seemed a little far away from things. I was only able to spend a few hours in the area and I plan to go back next weekend. Please give me an overview of the Syracuse suburbs and if there are any that I might be leaving out.

Thanks! Dawn

[Easybreezy]

Can you give us some additional information? Do you have any idea where your husband's office will be? Certain areas are easier commutes.

Personally, I'm somewhat partial to Baldwinsville. It's a nice area, the village has been revamped and it's a relatively easy commute to the downtown area, but not such an easy commute to eastern suburbs. (I'm thinking about gas prices here.)

[annamax102006]

Thank you. The nice thing is that he is able to choose where his office will be. It will actually be out of our home for the first year and then we will choose the location that best works for him and the company. We are moving from an area that I really love and this move is one that I hope works out for us.

We are from the Albany area and after college we both worked in NYC and we have been living in the metro Detroit area for five years. My husband's company moved us out here and they are now moving us to the CNY area. We are happy to be moving closer to family but I will really miss it here. Everything I need is within three miles and our school district is very good. We are in a very desirable location and because of this fact, we are lucky and our home will sell. The real estate market here is really bad and we really want to move to a place where we can stay for a while. I would hate to move again in a few years.

Thanks, Dawn

[vondoobie420]

stay away from oswego-the new orleans of the north

[Fred C]

How about Chittenango? The schools are good and its about 30 mins from Syracuse and maybe 15 mins from fayettville for shopping.

[kmbell]

I'm partial to the East Side of Syracuse proper and Dewitt, its neighbor, as well as Manlius. It never takes more than about 15 minutes by car to reach any place in the Syracuse area. Fayetteville-Manlius and Manlius Pebble Hill, a private, non-religious K-12 school in Dewitt, and to a lesser extent Christian Brothers Academy, also in Dewitt, have the best reputations for students. Jamesville Dewitt is also very good, though I'm not as familiar with it.

Anecdotal evidence: the other students from the area attending Penn with me (I went to Nottingham and Manlius Pebble Hill) were from Nottingham (East Side of Syracuse), J-D (Dewitt), F-M (Manlius), and the salutatorian of Liverpool (a highschool of 3,000 students).

[annamax102006]

I really want to stay close to shopping and don't want to drive more than ten min. School and location are very important to me. I like the east suburbs because of the hills. It just seemed very pretty.

I guess I just need to get out there and see what feels best.

[kmbell]

If shopping, as in clothes, is what you're looking for, Carousel Mall is accessible by car and shouldn't be more than 15 minutes away if you're in Syracuse or Dewitt. The Farmer's Market is right next door, which has good fresh produce and a bit of unrelated stuff like used Levis and Atari cartridges.

Most people on the east side of the city go to Shoppingtown Mall because you spend much less time parking and walking around to get to what you want to buy. It has Old Navy, Macy's, Dick's Sporting Goods, general mall stuff. In that general area is Erie Boulevard, [aside] which splits the city down the middle and is where the Erie Canal used to be, and has chain restaurants like Tully's, and stores like OfficeMax and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It's pretty standard fare, nothing exciting at all. The shopping spectacle is Carousel Mall.

If you're talking about groceries and such, Wegmans in Dewitt - which is by far the best grocery store in the area, if not in the state - is close to the University area and J-D, a bit further from Manlius, depending on where you live. People get really excited talking about Wegmans, I personally don't get it, but if you like selection and any food you can think of, that's your place. Someone told me once that families take their out of state guests there to show them how great it is.

[Sue Boyle CBPP]

Did you see the paper this morning...Elliot Spitzer has a bill proposed that will give Regents Diploma earning students in the Syracuse City School District FREE college tuition, possibly even at Syracuse University! I would seriously recommend that you check out Strathmore Strathmore Neighborhood > The Neighborhood Association ( DNN 4.0.2 ) and the neighborhood schools - Roberts k-8 and Corcoran HS (they have the IB program) if this turns out to be true.

[mkim]

Based on the poster's concerns of proximity and education, I would also suggest Dewitt or FM. If you look on greatschools.net, FM ranks higher than the JD district. If it were me, I would put my child into FM, but I would imagine that JD is fine. Also, there is now the new shopping plaza where the family oriented YMCA is in Fayetteville, along with common stores, like Target, Marshalls or TJ Maxx (one of those), some restaurants and an L.L. Bean is supposed to come. This is what I saw this past Summer when visiting. Don't really have an insider's view of what its like to live in Fayetteville as I grew up in Syracuse, but it seems very family oriented and changing with the needs of new families.