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I currently live in Ashburn, VA with my husband, 4 children, and my sister who goes to college here (she graduates in May and is moving out then-back to NJ where my family lives).
There are two reasons we are considering to move to Atlanta area, the first one is that my husband told me last week he wants to move close to his parents. He misses them. Seriously, he and his dad have a great relationship. They live in Alpharetta (north of Atlanta) and have no other family there. As far as his job goes, he can easily relocate there within his company. An offer to move is on the table.
Our second reason for the move is cost of living. Northern VA is obsenely expensive--especially since I'm a stay at home mom of 4 children.
Ashburn VA has been our home for three years. Our oldest is 7 and our triplets are 5. Once my sister moves out, we will have no other family near by except for my folks in NJ (4 hours away).
Both areas are horrendous with traffic, commute and sprawl. I'm ok with that. My biggest concern with making this move are education, lack of activities, convenience to EVERYTHING, and of course not being close to my family.
If we move there we are considering towns such as Roswell, Alpharetta, Cumming, Woodstock or Canton. My husbands job would be in Duluth but will be able to work from home and will have to visit client sites in downtown Atl.
I am looking for feedback or comparisons of these areas vs Ashburn.
Hello. I currently live in Ashburn and am a former resident of Metro Atlanta, although I am from Northern Virginia originally, so perhaps I can be of a bit of assistance.
Firstly, I should point out that for most of my time in Atlanta, I lived in the city of Doraville, about 20 miles or so, closer in towards Atlanta, from the areas that you are looking at, and truthfully was only in those areas a handful of times so take that as you will.
I think the most comparable area to Ashburn that you are looking at is Alpharetta. Generally, schools in Georgia rank fairly low when compared to those in Virginia. However, schools in Alpharetta and Duluth and this general area are generally some of the best in the state. In fact, I believe Chattahoochee High School is considered to be the best high school in the state. Like Ashburn, Alpharetta is a fast-growing suburb, mostly built in the past 15 years with no real center or downtown and full of people from someplace else. It's mostly middle and upper middle class as well. One area where Alpharetta and most of the rest of Atlanta will fall short in however is in terms of convenience and general (sub)urban planning. While a cookie-cutter suburb, Ashburn was planned to integrate a more community-friendly layout than many other of the sprawlburbs in this country, in it's inclusion of walking paths, lakes, sporting field, sidewalks, and it's divying up the community into sub-communities of sorts, each with their own community center and shopping center. That doesn't really seem to be the case in much of Atlanta. In Ashburn, while the traffic is bad, the layout of it means that many of your daily errands are within a stone's throw. You can go to the grocery store, the bank, the gas station, the video store, the barber, Starbucks, etc. in a matter of minutes generally without traversing any of the really traffic-clogged roads. The same does not hold true for Atlanta where the residential areas seem to be even more isolated than they are here. The area is lower density than Ashburn, with more single-family homes than Ashburn's tidy mix of townhomes, condos, apartments and homes within close proximity. Overall however, they are fairly comparable areas, whereas places like Woodstock and Cumming, a bit further out, are sort of similar to the newer areas springing up around Manassas and Gainesville in that they're a bit grittier and carry a bit more of Southern feeling to them. It's sort of a mishmash between older genteel Southern working class Atlanta and the yuppiefied "New South" Atlanta. Roswell meanwhile is closer in and is more like Sterling.
I hope this post made some sort of sense. It's late and I'm exhausted and the computer screen looks like a ball of black fuzz to me at the moment.
Thank you dullnboring. I am really torn about this potential move. I really like all the amenities and conveniences of Ashburn. I rarely have to leave town except for a Target and Costco run. I can't imagine what Ashburn would be like if the roads were not planned for the growth. Although I am turned off with the density of Ashburn, it is really a neat concept of living with each sub-community having its own shopping center/schools, etc..
It sounds like Alpharetta is a nice community except for having to travel to main highways to get to everything. I would like to live in an development that has its own swimming pools, clubhouse, etc. I am most worried about the schools, but I guess if you stay within the certain district it should be ok.
Thanks for the comparison... do you think Cumming/Woodstock are as welcoming to transplants?
Thank you dullnboring. I am really torn about this potential move. I really like all the amenities and conveniences of Ashburn. I rarely have to leave town except for a Target and Costco run. I can't imagine what Ashburn would be like if the roads were not planned for the growth. Although I am turned off with the density of Ashburn, it is really a neat concept of living with each sub-community having its own shopping center/schools, etc..
It sounds like Alpharetta is a nice community except for having to travel to main highways to get to everything. I would like to live in an development that has its own swimming pools, clubhouse, etc. I am most worried about the schools, but I guess if you stay within the certain district it should be ok.
Thanks for the comparison... do you think Cumming/Woodstock are as welcoming to transplants?
Cumming, Woodstock and pretty much all of Metro Atlanta is pretty welcoming to transplants. With it's insanely high rate of growth, it seems like everyone is a transplant so most people would have to be open towards transplants or they'd be discriminating against themselves . There's a bit of the "old guard" resentful of "Yankees" or of "yuppies" or of just in general the changing demographics and housing costs and traffic that they brought with them, but that's something that you'd find pretty much in any high-growth community. You'll find more transplants and a more suburban culture (i.e. planned subdivisions, strip malls, etc.) in Woodstock than you would in Cumming. Cumming is still pretty far out there and hasn't been engulfed in the mile-a-minute Atlanta sprawl.....yet. That could mean that locals are leery of outsiders changing their town, or it could mean that as part of the first trickle, you would be greeted warmly, while the second massive wave will get some resentment. I'm not sure. Neither area is your stereotypically provincial small Southern town so I doubt you'd have problems in either area. I would say they're both about as welcoming as Northern Virginia.
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. There's a bit of the "old guard" resentful of "Yankees" or of "yuppies" or of just in general the changing demographics and housing costs and traffic that they brought with them, but that's something that you'd find pretty much in any high-growth community. You'll find more transplants and a more suburban culture (i.e. planned subdivisions, strip malls, etc.) in Woodstock than you would in Cumming. Cumming is still pretty far out there and hasn't been engulfed in the mile-a-minute Atlanta sprawl.....yet. That could mean that locals are leery of outsiders changing their town, or it could mean that as part of the first trickle, you would be greeted warmly, while the second massive wave will get some resentment. I'm not sure. Neither area is your stereotypically provincial small Southern town so I doubt you'd have problems in either area. I would say they're both about as welcoming as Northern Virginia.
