Affordable yet interesting suburbanish urban 'hoods?

[Glenfield]

Originally Posted by MplsTodd

How about:

Minneapolis:
Kingfield
Fulton
Armatage
Longfellow

St. Paul:
Highland Park

Suburbs:
Hopkins
St. Louis Park
White Bear Lake (longer commute)

I think this is a good list.

[Justabitoff]

Originally Posted by golfgal

You will find neighborhoods like this in every suburb. I don't think you will have a problem finding what you want here.

I was not necessarily looking just for suburbs. I also wanted to know which neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper fit this description and are recommended. I didn't mean just "urban-ish" neighborhoods in the suburbs, I also meant "suburban-ish" neighborhoods in the urban areas.

[golfgal]

Originally Posted by Justabitoff

I was not necessarily looking just for suburbs. I also wanted to know which neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper fit this description and are recommended. I didn't mean just "urban-ish" neighborhoods in the suburbs, I also meant "suburban-ish" neighborhoods in the urban areas.

I realize that...just pointing out that you will have 100's of options of places to live. Your biggest hurdle is going to be your budget and that is really going to determine where you end up for the most part.

[EEVZ]

We live in Longfellow, and we really love it. We have two small children (2 & 4). We bought our house for $225k in 2009, and like it. It is small, at about 1300 sq feet, but we love the character. I know we looked at probably a hundred houses when we were looking to buy (indecisive!), and I would say there were plenty of good options in the 200-250k range in Longfellow and Nokomis. We also looked in Highland Park, and Mac Groveland, both neighborhoods we would also strongly consider, but houses there were just a bit higher. I love all the parks, and trails in the area. We are always out biking, and walking and running. There are plenty of options for restaurants and coffee places, and a fantastic cheap movie theater (Riverview). I would say our neighborhood is a mix of blue collar empty nesters and young families. I know when I hired my doula for my second child's birth, she said about 90% of her business comes from our neighborhood (and she lived in Stillwater!).
I'm currently researching schools for my son, who will start in Kindergarten next fall. There are a lot of options, some good, some not as good as can be expected in an urban area, but I feel like we have some really good public options. Once I started really looking at test scores (only part of the equation of course!), I felt more confident about our options. There are some good private options as well, some extremely expensive (Minnehaha Academy), and some quite reasonable in my opinion (then again, I pay a ton for center daycare for my kids now, so my perspective may be skewed!).

[rzzz]

I would suggest Macalester Groveland, Merriam Park East and West, and the Union Park areas of St. Paul. I have seen homes available from $189K to $300K which seem to fit your criteria. Look up the address for Kopplin's coffee and plug that into the real estate sites to see if the homes look acceptable.

In this area you are near a Whole Foods, retro movie theatre, violin repair store, model train store, fancy coffee shop, fancy ice cream, a number of diners, thai, chinese, 'gastropub', three private colleges, art shop, florist, patagonia store, bike lane to the bike path along the river, and so forth. Most neighborhoods in MSP are just a little bit too spread out to comfortably say everything is truly 'walkable,' but I walk everywhere in this area.

As someone else mentioned there is nothing really like Rye or anywhere in Westchester in the Twin Cities metro. However, this area is about as close to a "River Towns" vibe as you are going to get. I know a number of New Yorkers who have moved to this neighborhood and seem to like it.