The small suburban city of Town and Country has 10,815 residents of whom 88% are white, 7.5% Asian, 2.6% black and 1.7% Hispanic/Latino and they don't want any damn chickens.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... 0d5f6.html

If you are into raising your own food, move to St. Louis. Amazing that a city this small has 8 aldermen and a Planning and Zoning commission.

The Board of Aldermen on Monday turned down a plan to permit backyard chickens under a permitting process. The vote was 7-1 to accept the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning commission. Because the measure had been turned down 5-1 by the commission, any ordinance approving chickens would itself need six supporting votes for approval.

This small city is insanely wealthy, with one of the highest income rates in the country. It has the highest medium income of any city in Missouri over 10,000 in population.

If you were insanely rich, would you live in Town and Country? What is the benefit of living there? Not baiting, just curious. I assume privacy and stability (no changes to status quo) are the drivers...and staying far away from the have nots.

I was born and raised in the fine City of Town & Country (please, always with the ampersand ). I lived there until I graduated high school at age eighteen, after which I moved to the city, where I still reside, to attend school at Saint Louis University. I'd be happy to add to the list of reasons you suggested, all of which are frankly true.

- The parks (particularly the wonderful Longview Farm Park), and the neat community garden near the firehouse where you can grow veggies.

- The Town & Country Crossing strip mall, which includes a Whole Foods Market, a Target, and two fantastic restaurants (Bistro 1130 and Napoli 2), among other great stores and restaurants. It should be noted they have recently expanded the sidewalk along Clayton, so that it's now very easy to walk from the house I grew up in to that shopping center, in like fifteen minutes.

- The excellent Mason Ridge Elementary School.

- The relatively low density provided by the one-acre lot requirement (admittedly other places like Ladue have even higher requirements).

- Convenient access to the main Greater St. Louis thoroughfares (Clayton Road, Ladue Road, Interstates 64 and 270, Route 141 which has expanded in importance, now that it goes all the way past Interstate 70).

There are other reasons, and obviously these reasons don't mean it's the right place for everyone necessarily, depending on what you were looking for. But having grown up there and spent a lot of time there over my life (I still go out there often, obviously, to visit my parents and sisters who still live in the house), those are all things people from there tend to be proud of,

^thanks. So if you end up with a job/life that affords you the sums of $ that it takes to live in T&C, would you choose it as the place to root down and display your wealth and lifestyle choices or would the CWE or DT be more appealing to you? Or other places even? I'm just curious why the likes of the following wealthy folks don't choose to be closer to the action:

Bob Costas, NBC sports commentator
Dan Dierdorf, NFL Hall of Famer
Torry Holt, New England Patriots wide receiver
Rodger O. Riney, Scottrade CEO
Michael Roarty, Anheuser Busch marketing executive, created "This Bud's for you" slogan[12]
Patrick Stokes, Anheuser Busch chairman
Nikko Smith, singer, son of Ozzie Smith
Ozzie Smith, Major League Baseball Hall of Famer

Have these guys ever even lived in St. Louis? Cause they sure claim it. STL and T&C are distinctly different places with almost nothing in common other than shear proximity.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country,_Missouri

St. Louis has as good of schools (magnets/charters), Target, soon Whole Foods, Fields Foods, farmer's markets, etc, as good/more restaurants that you mentioned (and not in generic strip malls)...we just have a sh%^ ton of poor people and minorities and crime. Is that really the thing? I love honesty.

"Have these guys ever even lived in St. Louis? Cause they sure claim it. STL and T&C are distinctly different places with almost nothing in common other than shear proximity. "

To be honest, I have no idea what you're getting at by saying something like that. Should people who live in the St. Louis area not "claim" St. Louis, just because they don't live in the city limits? That seems a bit narrow, to me. Almost everyone who lives in the St. Louis area (2.4 million out of 2.7 million) then, should not "claim" St. Louis?

As for the thing about the schools.... I mean, as far as the people you have listed there, I highly doubt if any of their kids attended public schools. Most people in T&C don't. I didn't. But since I did mention Mason Ridge, I really gotta ask: how many traditional K-5 public elementary schools in the City of St. Louis are really on the same level as Mason Ridge in terms of resources, class size, and quality of education? My followup would be: How many of those schools don't require hopeful parents to roll the dice on a waiting list or a lottery? I'm not talking about experimental or non-traditional schools like the "language immersion" institutions and the like, either. This time, I am not the one baiting. I am genuinely curious.

Also, crime. Yeah. I would definitely say that, by itself, can make someone justifiably prefer to live in one area over another.

Poor people in an area definitely has the same effect, too. I wouldn't say it's so much the people themselves, as the inevitable crime and lower housing values that inundate areas in which low-income housing projects go up. To a somewhat-lesser extent, there's also the age-old issue that people of means tend to prefer that their children make friends with other children of means.

You point out that the city has all of those things, and to some extent, you're right. But Town & Country has them all within about five minutes driving distance of pretty much anyone who lives there. And virtually no crime. And guess what: if you want to experience anything the city has to offer, it's a quick hop then fifteen-twenty minutes down I-64 to any of it.

I guess if the CWE had similar crime rates and a retail shopping scene as Town & Country, and schools nearby the caliber of Priory, John Borroughs, et. al., that would make it a fairly close call. But the CWE does not.

Downtown, definitely not. Same as pretty much anywhere in the city, I would think.

It's a great place to live a relaxed life and raise your kids. Friends of mine moved there a few years ago and love it, not rich or wealthy, but have good jobs and do alright. They're not anti-city, but my buddy told me that he'd rather have deer run through his backyard than people. Which I can readily understand.

Mark: Take solace that it's not Wildwood.

dweebe wrote:

rawest1 wrote:I was born and raised in the fine City of Town & Country (please, always with the ampersand ). I lived there until I graduated high school at age eighteen, after which I moved to the city, where I still reside, to attend school at Saint Louis University. I'd be happy to add to the list of reasons you suggested, all of which are frankly true...

- The Town & Country Crossing strip mall, which includes a Whole Foods Market, a Target, and two fantastic restaurants (Bistro 1130 and Napoli 2), among other great stores and restaurants. It should be noted they have recently expanded the sidewalk along Clayton, so that it's now very easy to walk from the house I grew up in to that shopping center, in like fifteen minutes.

If you ever want to go shopping at the quietest, calmest Target: go to the Town & Country location. The place is NEVER busy. Even during the height of the Christmas madhouse shopping season on a weekend, the parking lot will be maybe 10 to 20% full. It's the type of store suburban people love, and I'll fully admit there have been a few times I've headed to the T&C store to shop. (I also have family in the area.)

Definitely this; the longest I've waited in line at the Target there is like 2-3 minutes.

How do they stay in business? Sounds like the downtown Macy's.

Mark Groth wrote:How do they stay in business? Sounds like the downtown Macy's.

I don't know. If the T&C Target closed I would not be shocked. The store is a complete 180 from the Brentwood and Hampton locations, which are always busy.

justme123 wrote:

Mark Groth wrote:How do they stay in business? Sounds like the downtown Macy's.

Any time I've been to that store there's been a steady stream of business, not a hair-on-fire crowded stressfest like the Target in Brentwood, but not a ghost town either.

Pretty good description of that store and why a Target by SLU would be a very good thing.

Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention the proximity to country clubs and the high-paying jobs.