urbanSTL

I have lived in New Town for a few months. I had heard all of the comments about it being too sterile, Truman's World, etc. What I have found is the most friendly people I have ever met, an ever changinig view from my window as new buildings pop up almost overnight. At any given time I can look out of my window and see people walking dogs, jogging, pushing stollers, playing catch in the parks, visiting along the street and shopping at the corner market. It is all I had hoped for and so much more.

Every weekend the grand canal is the setting for a wedding and on the same block a volleyball league plays under the lights. We can walk to a wonderful Irish Pub, beautiful churches, a wine bar, a fitness center and chat with new friends.

We came here planning to stay a year or two. After living here only a short time I am committed to spending the rest of my life in this incredible small town with a huge heart.

What it is short on is drama. It is peaceful. It is alive with people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. I feel safe and content here and I don't miss the town I moved from one bit.

There are homes for sale ranging from the mid $100's to $800's but there are also very resonable rates for apartments. This is the best decision I have ever made.

I'm not sure why people think the town is "creepy". We had guest last weekend and they were blown away by New Town.

It's just another suburb.



"New urbanist" community. I thought you lived in St. Charles to get away from urbanism? I just don't get it.



Sprawling is okay, as long as the houses are close together and it's walkable?



All the benefits of "urbanism" without all that pesky history and those dangerous minorities.

Off and on, Greg Whittaker had thought of moving to Soulard or Lafayette Square. He like the homes, the sense of community and the fact that you could walk to restaurants, stores and other neighborhood amenities. These St. Louis urban areas reminded him of the many vacations he and his wife had taken to Seaside, Fla., a planned "new urbanism" resort community where he parked the car, never re-entering it until it was time to leave. All the amenities and events they needed were right there within walking distance, reflecting the "new urbanist" movement - one that brings back the small town environment. He had grown up in St. Charles County, though, and really preferred to remain there.



He and others at Whittaker Homes batted around the idea of developing a "new urbanist" community in St. Charles County for about 10 years. After all, if he and his wife liked the Soulard, Lafayette Square and Seaside environments, yet preferred to live in St. Charles County, wouldn't others? Thus began the vision that became New Town at St. Charles, a roughly two-year-old, "new urbanist" community north of Hwy 370 at the New Town Boulevard/Elm Street exit in St. Charles County.



Since then, New Town has become an urban oasis in the middle of corn and soybean fields, north of the Fountain Lakes Commerce Center. Its housing stock combines Soulard-like row houses and town homes, Lafayette Square and Lindell-style mansions, and single-family, front-porch-clad residences resembling those found in small town Missouri. It contains something for all price levels, from apartments to homes ranging from the $120 thousands to over $1 million (for custom homes).

Link





I guess I don't understand wanting to live in suburbia, 25 miles out of the real city, but still live where there are row houses and "urban" planning...doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of living in the far flung burbs?



Trying to...trying...trying to understand al of this madness....ahhhh

I moved from a tiny rural town. What I love about New Town is it is only ten minutes from EVERYTHING but far enough away to be a small town. There is no traffic. People walk to church, walk to the post office, walk to the market. It's 1950 here and I love it. Do you know that the chapel is booked several years ahead for weddings? Why? It is beautiful here. I want to live in a place that is so beautiful that people wait years for their turn to be married in the chapel or next to the Grand Canal. Come see it, you may want to live here too.

newtonewtown wrote: What I love about New Town is it is only ten minutes from EVERYTHING...

You can't be serious.

I wish I was 10 minutes to nothing....wait!!! All jokes aside i'm sure NT is a wonderful place to raise a family...but no one can deny it's out in no man's land. I don't understand the appeal but maybe it's just me.

newtonewtown wrote:I moved from a tiny rural town. What I love about New Town is it is only ten minutes from EVERYTHING

10 minutes from EVERYTHING? Really? Everything except for...the city...Blues, Cardinals, Rams...Ted Drewes...hundreds of locally owned restaurants/bars...ethnic neighborhoods..The Loop. Wash Ave...Cherokee....and oh, and THE CITY AS A WHOLE.

newtonewtown wrote:but far enough away to be a small town.

I don't get the draw of moving from a small town yet still want to move to a small town. You are 23 miles from the real city.

newtonewtown wrote:There is no traffic.

Because 2,000 people live there, right?? That's what I read any way, I guess it could be more now. If they ever hit the 40,000 mark like they are hoping, it will have a ton of traffic but without the infrastructure to handle it (also see: Olive Blvd, Eager Rd, Brentwood Blvd, Hanley Rd).

newtonewtown wrote:It's 1950 here and I love it.

There are plenty of city neighborhoods that are walkable, but people decide to hole themselves up 25 miles out into the burbs and never get out to discover that type of thing. They drive to the city to visit the zoo and a Cardinals game, and then talk about how they couldn't handle the terrible traffic of the city. Visit an actual city neighborhood and see how terrible the traffic is. I get around just fine in my neighborhood, and pretty much any other neighborhood I visit.

newtonewtown wrote:Do you know that the chapel is booked several years ahead for weddings? Why? It is beautiful here. I want to live in a place that is so beautiful that people wait years for their turn to be married in the chapel or next to the Grand Canal.

How couldn't it be "beautiful?" (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...I haven't found a suburb yet I would call "beautiful"). The oldest house there is what, 3 years old? We'll just wait and see, maybe it will become a thriving, bustling neighborhood...of course then, the suburbanites who moved there to escape the dangers and traffic of the city will sprawl further west to escape the dangers, traffic, and "neighbors" of New Town. Then we will have a thread about what a beautiful subdivision is being built in Wentzville...after all, New Town has just gotten "too busy" and is going "way downhill."

newtonewtown wrote:Come see it, you may want to live here too.

Seen it, and no. Definitely not. The only suburbs I have ever found to be attractive are U City, Richmond Heights, and Maplewood. I lived in Fairview Heights, 13 miles to the city. I actually liked living there, being that it was so convenient (in the suburbs, my idea of convenient was close to chain restaurants and wal mart). Then I saw the light...that it would be rather nice to drive less than half an hour to visit the city that I actually moved to this area for.





Has Doug rubbed off on me??

Thank you everyone for bashing the poster who enjoys where he or she lives, my how friendly we are on this forum.



You should be ashamed because of your elitist attitudes that urban living is only for the inner city.



You are giving liberals a bad name and reputation for bashing the residents of New Town who found their small town urban escape in the City of St. Charles. It is not like New Town is out past O'Fallon, it is well located around job centers.



Good job Newtonewtown for reporting to the forum about small town urban living in St. Charles. Many of these bashers hate suburbia with a passion (and who could blame them when suburbia was accelerated by federal racist policies in housing, federal policies favoring the auto and highway and thus killing the streetcar, and federal policies that cleared neighborhoods that were not slums but good "aging" neighborhoods; all of which amounted to the near death of inner cities). Those are things our urbanists should dislike and not movement such as New Urbanism or Traditional Neighborhood Development which help, I repeat HELP, give rise to more urban living in the United States that will undoubtably cause the inner cities to rapidly rebuild.

SMSPlanstu wrote:Thank you everyone for bashing the poster who enjoys where he or she lives, my how friendly we are on this forum.



You should be ashamed because of your elitist attitudes that urban living is only for the inner city.



You are giving liberals a bad name and reputation for bashing the residents of New Town who found their small town urban escape in the City of St. Charles. It is not like New Town is out past O'Fallon, it is well located around job centers.



Good job Newtonewtown for reporting to the forum about small town urban living in St. Charles. Many of these bashers hate suburbia with a passion (and who could blame them when suburbia was accelerated by federal racist policies in housing, federal policies favoring the auto and highway and thus killing the streetcar, and federal policies that cleared neighborhoods that were not slums but good "aging" neighborhoods; all of which amounted to the near death of inner cities). Those are things our urbanists should dislike and not movement such as New Urbanism or Traditional Neighborhood Development which help, I repeat HELP, give rise to more urban living in the United States that will undoubtably cause the inner cities to rapidly rebuild.

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight, don't bring a "my suburb is awesome, and here's why I don't want to live in the city" argument to an urban board.



Oh, and I'm giving conservatives a bad name. I'm not even close to being what you would call a liberal.

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath. The topic of this thread is New Town in St. Charles and while the post from NewtoNewTown seemed oddly similar to Whittaker's marketing he or she should not be discouraged from posting their positive review of the development.



New Town isn't my cup of tea, but that's why there are multiple ice cream flavors. I like aspects of it and think it is miles ahead of low density growth that occurs out past O'Fallon.



And as far as politics being dragged into this thread, there is really no point to it.

Juice... tone it down a bit...coming off as an urban elitist won't help you make your point.

southsidepride wrote:And as far as politics being dragged into this thread, there is really no point to it.

Agreed. Don't know how being a liberal or conservative really applies, unless I fooled everyone with my holier than thou attitude

Moorlander wrote:Juice... tone it down a bit...coming off as an urban elitist won't help you make your point.

I know...but at the same time, I also know that converting a suburbanite to an urbanist is like converting a Muslim to Judaism, so what's the difference?

Dude you make no sense because you are phrasing them as absolutes. You are not converting a suburbanite into an urbanist because of the layout of their neighborhood, instead you are bringing more concentrated urban form to the suburbs because low density dispersal does not make sense without lavish public expenditure to subsidize it.



Urban as a lifestyle or identity do not necessarily equate to the arrangement of buildings and layout of neighborhoods.



Thank you Southsidepride for expressing more of the actual attitudes on this forum.

The problem this place has with Saint Charles is imaginary. Saint Charles is no more suburban than Saint Ann is. I think the imagining is mainly political as those that feel as they are "elite" on this board view that part of their betterment is in their goal to change Saint Louis proper from a run down piece of crap into somewhere that is a viable living place. Saint Charles offers direct competition to that. And since its growth rate has exceeded all other areas for nearly 20 years now, it is indeed a threat to the "new urbanism" that is preached here.

The last poster claims there is no industrial jobs in Newtown which is funny since the area is in the smack in the middle of all the largest employers in Saint Charles county - or a few miles from them. I could reason that it would be easier for certain residence to ride their bike to work than most people in Saint Louis city. Still, that's neither here nor there.

I love Saint Louis, I WISH I could move there, but there is no way I could ever talk my wife into moving there. And she is a liberal arts teacher. Sure we may have lived there when we were still childless - but the fact remains that the public school system in Saint Louis city is a joke. The fact remains that Saint Louis city has unreasonably high property taxes. The fact remains that the city has a separate employment tax. It's really a lose lose situation when you are looking into serving up Saint Louis as a "nice place to live" when compared to Saint Charles.

It isn't fair, but little in life is.

I am not sure what Saint Louis could do to change itself to be more attractive to families. I think the mentality of the political system there is too ingrained with a handout mentality that doesn't seem to want to go away.

I always thought the best hing for Saint Louis to do would be for it to get rid of this tariff mentality that it has suffered for over 100 years and re-image itself as a free trade city. That would put Saint Louis at a good advantage when compared even to Chicago - which seems to make businesses pay out the nose for existing there. I truly believe if Saint Louis did that it would suddenly see numerous businesses choose Saint Louis for operations.



Anyway, you guys shouldn't be so mean to people about Saint Charles. It's really ugly and weird. If Saint Charles is successful, instead of berating it, learn from it. Maybe Saint Louis can steal some of Saint Charles thunder if it put to work some of the same models Saint Charles uses to entice development. Plus it should be easier anyway, Saint Louis has better existing infrastructure.

village idiot wrote:The problem this place has with Saint Charles is imaginary. Saint Charles is no more suburban than Saint Ann is.

I don't know how many people on here have a problem with St. Charles City - its fairly urban and very historic, and the school district isn't in complete chaos. I'd visit way more often if metrolink went out there, but we/they didn't want it (i wasn't old enough to vote...i'm a native of St. Charles City). I think the main beef is with the whole "golden triangle" mentality, the belief that a "new St. Louis" should be rebuilt far far away from the troubles of the "old St. Louis...," and lets berate and make fun of its troubles in complete and total ignorance and put cardinals stickers on our cars and call ourselves St. Louisans. I grew up with this...it's not imaginary. I think an informed as well as wildly ignorant counter reaction should be expected in a metro that's literally tearing apart to the northwest.

Well it looks like NIMBY ism is rearing it's head in New Town:



http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... mentAnchor



At least some of the folks get it that having businesses within wallking distance is going to mean a little more noise.



And of course the same haters who think all urban living, whether it be a neighborhood 100 yrs. old in the city or a new one in the floodpain, is akin to communism are doing what they do best in the comments section

I didn't want New Town to be built where it was built, but now that it is there I don't want it to fail.



Today there is news that the ice rink won't open this winter.



I worry that eventually this will wind up being just another subdivision. Albeit with different homestyles than most.



Winghaven is already headed down that path.



I hope I am wrong, but this is another instance where if New Town had been built contigous with older neighborhoods instead of out on it's own they would be better off.



It was a risk Whittaker took by building it out there. If it was a smashing success all the acolades would go to them, whereas integrating it into older established areas would not have that same effect IMO.



Just my two pennies worth.

I don't think New Urbanism is dead at all. The recession and housing bust is killing off development everywhere, both urban and suburban.



Certainly, New Town would have been better off if better connected with surrounding areas, but I'm sure it will eventually be completed, and many people will love living there.

Does anybody know if New Town is applying for LEED for Neighborhood Development? I'd imagine that New Town would be perfect for this rating since its a model of new urbanism communities. Here's a link to more about LEED for Neighborhood Development:

http://www.cnu.org/leednd