Forest Park?

[BRU67]

My vote is for a good steak house Nothing against the Golden Steer but I sure wouldn't mind seeing some more competition on this front.

[Chiburbs07]

Thanks for all the great input. It will help as we narrow our search for our first home together!

[OakBrookMom]

Having had young clients look in Forest Park, most of them tend to gravitate to the Madison Street area and want to stay north of the expressway. I know a family that lived south and they loved the area and really enjoyed the waterpark but had to move when it was time for their oldest to go to high school. Almost all of them took the blue line to work except a few in the north part that were able to walk to the green line or metra. We looked in Oak Park when we were first married and while it was our first choice we couldn't find anything in our price range with affordable taxes in an area where my husband who grew up in Chicago felt safe leaving me for weeks at a time when he traveled. The Austin area of Chicago is really rough and at the time I worked 16 hour days coming home very late at night. I didn't ever feel unsafe but he was adamant about being east of Lombard and north of the expressway. So we went west and checked out Elmhurst and LaGrange and wound up in Elmhurst. LaGrange is a great option with really quick transportation to the city and a really nice dowtown area. Elmhurst would probably be too suburban for you at this point.

[Farmer Bob]

"Forest Park has a diverse population spread throughout the village." -- roxymoxy

It's drawback exactly, section 8 being the culprit here.

[old forest parker]

Forest Park is dying, I lived there for 28 years. The grade school system is fine, but families don't want to send there kids to Proviso East, and who could blame them. East is a horrible school. I know of at least 25 familes that I knew when I grew up thier that moved west because of section 8 in areas of town. You can dress up Madison st all you want, the town has had a lot of turnover and the Forest Park I grew up in is gone. I love my home town but its changed.......

[mdz]

Agreed about the Proviso thing, but it's turned into a real decent place to live if you're single or a young couple. Good transportation, food, bars, theatre in the area.

[crbcrbrgv]

Originally Posted by roxymoxy

For someone who lives in Berwyn (which is all south of I-290 and predominantly spanish speaking), I take offense at your conclusions about south Forest Park.

Predominantly Mexican does not mean predominantly Spanish speaking. If you don't believe me, you can ask my wife and pretty much every person on our former block. All Mexicans, all speak English.