moving to Champaign

My daughter is getting ready to take US Postal Exam here in St Louis. If she passes, there are opportunities in Champaign. Could someone please give me a fair assessment as to the city? My daughter has a 10 yr old and a 1 yr old, so, how are daycares, neighborhoods good for kids (safe), median house/apt prices??
Thanks for your help

Guess no one uses this site in Champaign as in other cities...no one answered my question either about schools. Good luck to your daughter.
I've heard it was a nice place, but not certain of neighborhoods yet. I think we are going to consider Mahomet now due to the public school system problems in Champaign we have learned about.

Still an AR girl wrote:

Guess no one uses this site in Champaign as in other cities...no one answered my question either about schools. Good luck to your daughter.
I've heard it was a nice place, but not certain of neighborhoods yet. I think we are going to consider Mahomet now due to the public school system problems in Champaign we have learned about.

I really appreciate your response. The more I hear about this postal job, the less impressed I am. It is a temporary, casual position. I was just concerned, because my girls have never been far away from me. Typical grandma.... Good luck to you, also. And, again thank you for the response!

Champaign is really two cities, Champaign and Urbana. Urbana is a fairly dead town with one car dealer, no theaters, little shopping and little else, except higher taxes. Savoy is a small town on the South edge of Champaign with short times to all parts of Champaign and they use the Champaign schools.

Champaign is actually doing fairly well in these economic times with unemployment lower than many areas and housing holding up much better than many areas of the country.

Schools are good, but I wouldn't say outstanding. Your best bets for grade schools are Bottenfield and Barkstall (sp?). Barkstall requires certain clothing. We have three middle schools, I like Eddison and two high schools, Centennial is air conditioned for what little good that does. They are pretty equal with a strong cross town rivalry. Urbana has it's own school system with fewer schools and one high school as it is a smaller town. The pool and football field are at Centennial and shared by both schools.
We also have a 2 Catholic grade schools and a new high school. We also have university high school associated with the U of I and a pre-school for gifted kids through the U of I. In addition to the U of I we have Parkland community college.

Deanna wrote:

My daughter is getting ready to take US Postal Exam here in St Louis. If she passes, there are opportunities in Champaign. Could someone please give me a fair assessment as to the city? My daughter has a 10 yr old and a 1 yr old, so, how are daycares, neighborhoods good for kids (safe), median house/apt prices??
Thanks for your help

There are parts of town that are better and worse than others, but nothing to horrible. Post your email and I can contact you with further details on where and where not to look. There are many, many apartments if she would be looking for that. Generally the more southwest in town you go the newer and more expensive the housing.

Our main post office in the North West corner of town is fairly new and we have a second (the old) post office downtown. I have a good friend that works at the PO and seems to really like working there.

Shopping is abundant and includes a decent mall and a number of strip malls. We have three walmarts in the immediate area, a sams club, sears, penneys, blah, blah, blah. We have a huge number of restaurants.

Our park district is pretty decent and our pool is new with a lazy river. We have lots of city parks and they offer good programs for kids, movies in the park, etc. Urbana has an an indoor aquatics center with year-round swimming.

Our city library is brand new and the Urbana library was just renovated. Your library card will work at either.

Another option is to live in one of the smaller towns around Champaign. The two more popular are Mahomet about 10 miles West of Champaign and St. Joe about 7 miles East of Urbana. They have been popular in the past ten years or so with people looking to get their kids into smaller schools but I think they are becoming overcrowded.

I think the majority of areas in town are very safe for kids. Of course there are differences in different areas of town. I can't say about daycare as my youngest is a sophmore in high school. As far as house prices I would recommend looking at somewhere like remax online. If you tell me what she would want to spend on a house and what size and age I could give you some ideas. I'm going to take a guess here, but I would say 1600 sq ft new around 150-175, 2000 sq ft maybe 175-200k. There are older neighborhoods with nice houses also. As far as apartments, there are very nice ones that are gated and there are crappy ones, depends on your needs and budget.

I have lived here over 40 years and while it's not the most exciting place, unless you like to watch corn grow it is a good town that is constantly expanding. It's a good place to raise kids with two college options as well. We have some industrial businesses but much of Champaign is centered around the U of I and high tech companies like Wolfram research, Frasca Aviation and such. One very nice thing is that you can be downtown Chicago in about two hours, Indy in an hour and a half and St. Louis, Cincinatti are a bit farther.

Post up your email address if you want to contact me more about this.

Deanna wrote:

My daughter is getting ready to take US Postal Exam here in St Louis. If she passes, there are opportunities in Champaign. Could someone please give me a fair assessment as to the city? My daughter has a 10 yr old and a 1 yr old, so, how are daycares, neighborhoods good for kids (safe), median house/apt prices??
Thanks for your help

This was the first part of my message, but it was to long.

Champaign is really two cities, Champaign and Urbana. Urbana is a fairly dead town with one car dealer, no theaters, little shopping and little else, except higher taxes. Savoy is a small town on the South edge of Champaign with short times to all parts of Champaign and they use the Champaign schools.

Champaign is actually doing fairly well in these economic times with unemployment lower than many areas and housing holding up much better than many areas of the country.

Schools are good, but I wouldn't say outstanding. Your best bets for grade schools are Bottenfield and Barkstall (sp?). Barkstall requires certain clothing. We have three middle schools, I like Eddison and two high schools, Centennial is air conditioned for what little good that does. They are pretty equal with a strong cross town rivalry. Urbana has it's own school system with fewer schools and one high school as it is a smaller town. The pool and football field are at Centennial and shared by both schools.

We also have a 2 Catholic grade schools and a new high school. We also have university high school associated with the U of I and a pre-school for gifted kids through the U of I. In addition to the U of I we have Parkland community college.

Deanna wrote:

My daughter is getting ready to take US Postal Exam here in St Louis. If she passes, there are opportunities in Champaign. Could someone please give me a fair assessment as to the city? My daughter has a 10 yr old and a 1 yr old, so, how are daycares, neighborhoods good for kids (safe), median house/apt prices??
Thanks for your help

Post is to long, here is part one

Champaign is really two cities, Champaign and Urbana. Urbana is a fairly dead town with one car dealer, no theaters, little shopping and little else, except higher taxes. Savoy is a small town on the South edge of Champaign with short times to all parts of Champaign and they use the Champaign schools.

Champaign is actually doing fairly well in these economic times with unemployment lower than many areas and housing holding up much better than many areas of the country.

Schools are good, but I wouldn't say outstanding. Your best bets for grade schools are Bottenfield and Barkstall (sp?). Barkstall requires certain clothing. We have three middle schools, I like Eddison and two high schools, Centennial is air conditioned for what little good that does. They are pretty equal with a strong cross town rivalry. Urbana has it's own school system with fewer schools and one high school as it is a smaller town. The pool and football field are at Centennial and shared by both schools.

We also have a 2 Catholic grade schools and a new high school. We also have university high school associated with the U of I and a pre-school for gifted kids through the U of I. In addition to the U of I we have Parkland community college.

sorry about the multiple posts, but they were not showing up right away.