Looking for suburban feel either in Topeka or Johnson County (Overland Park: fit in, sale)

[emelvee]

I've started a new job in Berryton, about 20 minutes south of Topeka. I would prefer to find a home around Topeka, but I'm not finding much that fits what we're looking for. It's also a smaller metro area than we prefer to live in. So I've been scouting out Olathe, Lenexa, and Shawnee. I want to be as close to Berryton without getting too from KC. I know this means a 1+ hour drive each way, but I probably will only need to be in the office 3 days per week.

We're used to a suburban area, 20-30 minutes from a major city. We currently live about 40 minutes from Raleigh, NC, and previously were about 30 minutes outside of Portland, OR. The tentative plan is for us to relocate to Kansas once school is out in early June. I know it's probably advisable to rent, but we'll likely end up buying a home right away.

Wife and I have a 10 year old daughter, so middle and high school quality is a major consideration. 2500+ sq ft home, in the $300k price range, or less if possible. Convenient to shopping (5 minutes to at least a grocery store/gas/etc, 15-20 minutes to big box stores/mall/etc). We prefer new construction, but will consider a home built within the past five years or so. We're hoping to find 1/2 an acre (I imagine that's a challenge with new construction). We want to be in a subdivision, to have some neighbors.

Any suggestions?

[Amojo]

I noticed that you were looking for a nice suburban area around last year sometime. We live about 40 minute from Raleigh NC as well. However, I am in the same predicament that you were in. I have no clue about where to live in Kansas. My husband will be working in the Burlington KS for about six to nine months, so we are looking to relocate temporarily. He is willing to commute max 1.5 hrs. We have two elementary school age children, and was just wondering what you all came up with as far as neighborhoods and most importantly schools. I appreciate any insight that you could give me.

[devati]

I used to live in Goldsboro, but went to Raleigh a lot.

Personally, I know of no people who -like- Topeka. Most I know of will take Lawrence over it any day with it's greater culture and lower crime. A lot of people come here, even from KC because of what there is to do here. South Overland Park, next to Olathe, is idyllic as far as what someone wanting a suburb might desire, and the employment rate is very low in the county, however they are naive and haughty about their city. Their schools in the 90's ranked the best in the nation and they have excellent teachers. It would be much cheaper to live in some parts of Topeka and your house will not appreciate as well. Lawrence (KU, college town) drives me nuts by now, but most residents say this is the only place in Kansas we would live. We get a lot of people who move here from Portland, Boulder or Raleigh.

New construction is hard to find around here given the economy, and I am not familiar with Olathe or Overland Park well enough anymore, but their plots tend towards the sprawling side. Lawrence you could live in the country with new construction and be 5 minutes from big box retailers and groceries, but the plot size might be sacrificed some, or if you go a little older you can easily get both in town. I am throwing it in there because Lawrence is most like Carrboro/Chapel Hill.

Olathe is a bit more conservative than Topeka, and Lawrence is like the state hippie by Kansas standards. People have compared it to being like living in a metropolitan area only packaged into a smaller less dense city. Olathe isn't bad. Just Everywhere, US with a decidedly Christian corporation-inclined flair (typical JoCo). However, it makes for an insane commute. Olathe or Lawrence would have better schools than Topeka. Coming here from NC, I was shocked to remember how few black people there are, and that most of the black people are more than often white if you know what I mean. Topeka will be your most racially diverse bet. There are nice rural/suburban yuppie parts of Topeka too. Lawrence however covets more culturally diverse experiences, and it can be reflected in their restaurants, and venues.

If nothing else, I would avoid Ottawa. All people there have to do all day is gossip and have underage babies, while others espouse physically punitive parenting methods exclaiming that their twice dui charged son turned out alright and everyone murmors confirmatory appreciative support. It's veritably the underage birth capital of the state. On Saturdays they load their cars up with gravel they steal from Wal-Mart, and on Sunday they go to a church where someone tells them what they think they should believe and then they travel to Lawrence because there's nothing to do and only two bars, and getting drunk is one of the few interesting hobbies one can take up. Just my experience having worked there..

[devati]

Since someone asked, by greater culture, I mean diversity of activities, greater tolerance, events and influence. We have an Indian speciality store downtown where one can buy Henna, pakoras, saris, and Amla oil, then a few blocks down a British Imports store and European Imports store (primarily food). Exit out the back and take a right and you have a nationally renowned artisan bakery/restaurant/patisserie, and two other stores/restaurants cover Middle Easter/mediterranean food. And of course, belly dancing classes are available and popular. Every year there is a large folk music festival, along with an Americana Academy where you can learn to play anything from the ukele and hammered dulcimer to classical and jazz guitar, and I have seen instruments as diverse as a shamisen and surbahar played skillfully downtown, along with more common instruments such as the sax, KU orchestral students, banjo, guiltar, and folk groups with fiddles.

Downtown, there is a christian cafe/art gallery yet a Shamanic and herbal shop (and at least two Shamanic practitioners in the area), and across the river a well established Wicca/crystal shop. Most major food ethnicities are to be found in Lawrence including Korean, however I lament that I have to travel to downtown KC for Ethiopian or spectacular raw vegan fair. Farmer's markets and local produce here are a bigger deal than it might be in other parts of the country and you can easily get Emu meat and eggs during the farmer's market that runs three times a week or from the local grocery stores that carry it and the Mennonite communities nearby.

In some major publication, I think it was USA Today, Lawrence was strangely picked as the greatest music scene between Denver and Chicago, however I don't know much about that. We do have a lot of live shows and local music and an active bar life with a smoking ban.

KU brings in a lot of culture and events via the Lied Center, and teaches a wide array of foreign languages from Indigenous Quichua of Ecuador to Tibetan. You can see these instructors on campus sometimes dressed as a Tibetan monk or in traditional garb. There is a good sized Tibetan Kagyu Buddhist group that does Vajrayana practice with a lineage linked back to monks in Northern India. There is also a free Qi Gong club that meets in south park. Every few weeks in the summer there is an event of some sort there, whether its a band, or Art in the Park where many local artists gather to sell their work. Frequently other events will be open air concerts downtown or a Busker festival where street performers from all over will put on a show. Lawrence has been noted to be a decent market for the aspiring artist, and many writers have come from here or made their home here including Burroughs and Langston Hughes.

We also have one of two Indian Universities in the Nation, with a larger than normal population of Native Americans, and a yearly Pow Wow and a large Indian Art Fair that people will travel the country for to exhibit their traditional work. Frequently, someone will sale Indian Tacos to raise money for something as well.

For one example in Topeka, the Phelps closed down a restaurant with protests against a lesbian waitress. Here in Lawrence we debate them or will try to get them to picket our theatre performances for publicity.

We're also slightly more green savvy than anywhere nearby, and our public transportation system is well designed and the bus will wait on you if your bus is running a little late or someone will even take you to your door should it be later, and a safe bus system to discourage drinking and driving Thursday through Saturday.

We also have many miles of mountain bike and walking trails near downtown or Clinton Lake, some bike lanes, and a healthy number of avid cyclists etc.

If it came down to it, I would rather live in Boulder or Portland, but it's tolerable. The Kansas naivety especially in regards to authority figures, status quo, and top down constraints gets to me sometimes. It's worse in Overland Park/JoCo from my recent experiences there.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by devati

....The Kansas naivety especially in regards to authority figures, status quo, and top down constraints gets to me sometimes. It's worse in Overland Park/JoCo from my recent experiences there.

Please expand and explain further.

[devati]

I might have a hard time putting it into words..

One example would be that in many places, it is normal to ask for a second opinion from another doctor, even encouraged. I have frequently encountered the mindset here where the doctor has his or her head in the clouds, very much unaware of the broad range of research or treatment, or perhaps the pharmaceuticals have him pigeonholed naively that there is only one way to treat something. There is the mindset that they have the final authority and the final understanding, having been through the medical school and you are very much in the wrong to challenge the system in place over you, that his degree and research is current and infallible. To go against that is somehow offensive. Missourians are a bit less naive in my experience.

As for JoCo, they want to believe that Johnson County, and specifically Overland Park is this amazing bubble of perfection and commercialization hybridized into a perfect marriage of some near Utopia of Suburbia. That they don't have the problems other places do, and when it's obvious they need an alternative school like ever other school district, they're one of the last school districts to address it. If there is a problem with the system or a hierarchy over something, they will first balk at the notion, perhaps turn on its renderer redressing issues with them, or flatly live in denial that a problem exists.

It's hard being there when you're different and everyone is in affluent naive la la land worrying about something ephemeral to look presentable, making endless suppositions of their belief of your status. I've never been judged off the basis of what I wear so profoundly, but I dressed attractively to look at computers, albeit more like a liberal, outdoorsy, nonconformist, young author-type than someone with money who could buy any computer they were selling, and I was treated like trash at one of their computer discount stores because I didn't seem to fit the JoCo pedigree and got the strong feeling that they did not want me in their discount computer store (Micro Center, I am talking to you). I'm taking Spanish there, and one of the students in my class mentioned her mom didn't care who she hung out with, and I got the feeling what she did or drank, as long as they looked nice. She joked in a manner adressing how wrong it was, about how one of the kids from a dysfunctional family got picked on because of the fact that she was abused, and how kids at school would push her down the stairs, and pick on and harass her constantly.

When I attended Blue Valley, I went to their best Elementary school and the Middle school that fed into. There was this notion that you had to talk to everyone, and everyone was superficial and fake. You had to act somewhat like a snob frequently to fit in and get by, with a few rare exceptions, and you learned that in Elementary school. There was a lot of hierarchy among students and cliques. I do believe it was worse at the high school I would have gone to, but I relocated to Lawrence. In Lawrence we had a thespian obese pothead and african american woman as homecoming king and queen and it was much more egalitarian. The other high school several years later elected a special needs disabled kid and one of the more popular pretty girls to go with him. I never experienced or heard of rumors or malicious gossip the whole time I was there. If there was hazing or abuse there, I never saw it.

Now that I am medically better and taking classes, a lot of the professors in Overland Park are stuck up too despite being a community college. They'll grade you on superfluous things no one knows exist like the subjunctive in Comp I or ignore the normal emphasis on the quality and style of your writing like most universities for a very condemning grammar orientation with no development on your actual writing ability or cleanly breaking down grammatical sentence structure (what I learned at a normal university comp I). Attendance policies that vary radically, marking you off a half a letter grade for missing a day of an excessively boring and poorly planned class, as if harsh punitive grading systems based more on eagerness to comply and conform were a better way to grade than by skill and material integration. They are very proud and think themselves a perfect model comparatively, and it makes them blind. When Sprint nearly left there was a huge panic. All they had built up would have been gone.

From my experiences in Ottawa, I actually think many of them were more able to question the status quo and think flexibly than a lot of people I have met in Overland Park. It's not a question of aptitude, it's ego and attachment to perception. You also can't learn from someone well when you're constantly preoccupied with how you are better than everyone else or trying to be. Sorry I don't know how to explain this better..

If you ask me, the things that you experience and are taught to behave as in Lawrence, respect, not judging off ephemeral status objects, creativity, depth, compassion, interest in diversity and novelty, intellectual expansion and curiosity for its own sake, human interest over human exploitation, are much more valuable than anything Overland Park could offer. Granted, Lawrence is not perfect at such things, but those elements are certainly much more pronounced there than in OP or Topeka.

[MOKAN]

But don't you just hate how the sorority girls drive in Lawrence and the fact that they all have luxury cars!

Sounds like to me you have a bit of a personal problem with a lot of what you've addressed more than anything and it sounds like you're using one part of Johnson County to paint the entire state of Kansas. But I think you sufficiently expanded on your naivety bit, thanks.

[devati]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

But don't you just hate how the sorority girls drive in Lawrence and the fact that they all have luxury cars!

Sounds like to me you have a bit of a personal problem with a lot of what you've addressed more than anything and it sounds like you're using one part of Johnson County to paint the entire state of Kansas. But I think you sufficiently expanded on your naivety bit, thanks.

I've never been treated poorly by the sorority girls here in town and I had a job where I had to deal with a lot of them. Most were very kind and considerate. I don't hate people who are attached to luxury objects, I dislike it when people think that is the only thing that matters in life and judge the value of another person based off that, especially as if they are the villains to progress in contemporary society.

If I think the United States is naive when it pushes towards the degradation of our natural resources and rushes blindly forward idolizing its own pathway to destruction, does that make me naive or cause me to have personal issue? People judge me based off the fact I don't watch TV in Lawrence, as they would in many places. There are states and places like California and Oregon that are less naive in such regards or idolize the process less. And maybe it's my own mypoic tunnel vision and lack of experience to seeing that these issues are more endemic to America as a whole and Lawrence isn't much more intellectually liberated in its capacity, as they are the values pushed and elevated in our commercial society alongside the exaltation of one individual over another, celebrity cult status, and ego gratification rather than sacrifice and eudaimonic fulfillment which is gradually being shown to be the true source of happiness. I don't hate Johnson County, I just don't like it when materialism is exalted over cultural or humanistic values. Any place where a high school student is pushed down the stairs for being abused and the majority of the student body condone the behavior by their own lassitude and apathy is sick in my opinion. Any place that preaches the bible yet exalts corporate greed and pillaging, or thinks that one is not their brother's keeper or should not have to play the good samaritan because happiness comes from sensory indulgence and convenience is naive, blind to the asceticism that is a more of their own faith. Any place that lacks the gumption and courage to question such a society or to question the whole of its integrity and the authority figures and leaders therein is blindly turning over their power and morality in favor of a dissociative drunken trance. We are not meant to be cogs in a corporate machine or cut into squares in favor of a homogenized unquestioning worker class. Creative expansion and innovation does not come with material reward or fearful cultural tenets compelling the denial a free thinking introspective mind. That is my primary issue with Johnson County. Topeka and Lawrence both idolize that process less.